S. HRG. 109–195 Senate Hearings Before the Committee on Appropriations Department of Homeland Security Fiscal Year 2006 109th CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION H.R. 2360 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY NONDEPARTMENTAL WITNESSES Department of Homeland Security, 2006 (H.R. 2360) S. HRG. 109–195 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ON H.R. 2360 AN ACT MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOME- LAND SECURITY FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2006, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES Department of Homeland Security Nondepartmental witnesses Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 99–863 PDF WASHINGTON : 2005 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi, Chairman TED STEVENS, Alaska ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri TOM HARKIN, Iowa MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland CONRAD BURNS, Montana HARRY REID, Nevada RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HERB KOHL, Wisconsin JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire PATTY MURRAY, Washington ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota LARRY CRAIG, Idaho DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois MIKE DEWINE, Ohio TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado J. KEITH KENNEDY, Staff Director TERRENCE E. SAUVAIN, Minority Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire, Chairman THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia TED STEVENS, Alaska DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HERB KOHL, Wisconsin LARRY CRAIG, Idaho PATTY MURRAY, Washington ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah HARRY REID, Nevada WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California Professional Staff REBECCA DAVIES JAMES HAYES CAROL CRIBBS KIMBERLY NELSON HILL SHANNON O’KEEFE CHARLES KIEFFER (Minority) CHIP WALGREN (Minority) SCOTT NANCE (Minority) DRENAN E. DUDLEY (Minority) Administrative Support AVERY FORBES (II) CONTENTS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2005 Page Department of Homeland Security ......................................................................... 1 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2005 Department of Homeland Security ......................................................................... 117 THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 2005 Department of Homeland Security ......................................................................... 349 Nondepartmental Witnesses ................................................................................... 435 (III) DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2005 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 10:34 a.m., in room SD–138, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thad Cochran presiding. Present: Senators Cochran, Byrd, and Leahy. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY STATEMENTS OF: MICHAEL J. GARCIA, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT ROBERT C. BONNER, COMMISSIONER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION EDUARDO AGUIRRE, JR., DIRECTOR, U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMI- GRATION SERVICES STATEMENT OF SENATOR THAD COCHRAN Senator COCHRAN. The hearing will please come to order. Today we begin our committee’s review of the fiscal year 2006 budget re- quest for the Department of Homeland Security. We will consider specifically the request for programs and activities of U.S. Citizen- ship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I am pleased to welcome the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Im- migration Services, Eduardo Aguirre; the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Robert Bonner; and the Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Michael Garcia. Our committee will work with you to help ensure that we provide the funds necessary for your agencies to carry out their responsibil- ities and missions. For fiscal year 2006, the President’s budget re- quests $12.9 billion to fund the organizations appearing before us today. This includes mandatory and discretionary appropriations, user fee collections, and trust funds. We thank each of you for submitting to the committee copies of your statements in advance. These will be made a part of the record and we invite you to make any comments you think will be helpful to the committee’s understanding of the budget request. Before hearing from the witnesses, I am pleased to yield to Sen- ator Leahy or other Senators who may wish to make opening state- ments. Senator Leahy. (1) 2 STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY Senator LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think these three agencies before us have the duty of keeping our Nation safe, but also keeping our historic commitment to legal immigration. I know I have to think about the fact that my grand- parents came, my maternal grandparents, came to this country not speaking any English. If they had not been here, their grandson would not be here, and how proud and how happy they were to come. I remember talking with my grandparents as a child and how much it meant to them to be the first generations of Americans. It has left a mark in my own mind. You look around this room, look around anywhere else, look at your own backgrounds, and we know that we are a Nation of immigrants. We have to keep being able to do that. BUDGET SHORTFALLS AND INCREASED STAFFING FOR THE BORDER PATROL When we held hearings on these three agencies last year, Mr. Chairman, they were facing substantial budget shortfalls. They had imposed hiring freezes. I want to know where we stand today on these issues. I am concerned that the administration is ignoring Congress’s clear and consistent call, call from both Republicans and Democrats, for substantial increases in staffing for the Border Pa- trol. The Border Patrol’s presence on our northern border—and I want to remind everybody we have a northern border as well as a southern border; I live an hour’s drive from it—it was minimal be- fore the September 11th attacks. I think we had something like 300 agents stretched over 4,000 miles of border. There is no other place in the world similar to that. I authored a provision in the Patriot Act to triple that number. It has been achieved. A lot more needs to be done. The President signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. That mandated increasing at least 2,000 Border Patrol agents for fiscal year 2006, 20 percent of them for the northern bor- der. But that is the good news and the President did sign that bill for the 2,000, but his budget provides only enough funding for 210. So he signed the bill with great fanfare for 2,000 and put the budg- et in for 10 percent of it. And it appears none of them go to the northern border. So I hope Mr. Bonner will explain why the administration is not heeding this Congressional mandate and whether he now believes it is time to declare mission accomplished for the job of protecting our northern border. LAW ENFORCEMENT SUPPORT CENTER Assistant Secretary Garcia and I have spoken a number of times about the excellent work of the Law Enforcement Support Center. We have visited this. This is the place that stores information for State and local police. It provides immigration status and identities of aliens any time of the day or night, every day of the year. 3 FISCAL YEAR 2006 BUDGET REQUEST FOR CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES Of course, Mr. Aguirre, we talked before, I am concerned about the President’s proposed budget for Citizenship and Immigration Services. It calls for a 50 percent cut in the amount of directly ap- propriated funds for CIS. At the same time the President says he will achieve his goal of reducing the average wait time for appli- cants for immigration benefits to 6 months. He has asked the Congress to enact a guest worker program that is going to significantly increase the CIS workload. That is fine, we can increase it, but if the administration is cutting the manpower for this substantially, but wanting to add to the workload, I do not know how you ever get here. H2B VISA PROGRAM I hope—the last thing is I hope the CIS and the administration will support bipartisan efforts in Congress to increase the cap for the H2B visa program. The Department announced in January for the second straight year the statutory cap has been reached and that is causing tourism-related businesses across the country to go into justifiable panic and concern. We have a bipartisan group of 16 colleagues introducing S. 352, the Save Our Small and Seasonal Business Act of 2005. It would allow aliens who obtained H2B visas in recent years to reenter under that program. I hope the administration would support it. It is a quick, easy, I think effective, cost effective way of handling this. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Those are some of the concerns I have. I thought I would express them here because I know we are going to have votes in between and I may have to go back and forth. Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much, Senator. Senator Byrd. STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROBERT C. BYRD Senator BYRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Excuse me, I am sorry. Senator LEAHY. Any time you want. Senator BYRD. Thank you. Well, today, Mr. Commissioner and also Mr. Assistant Secretary and Director Aguirre, we hold the first hearing on the President’s budget for the Department of Homeland Security.