| She was also concerned with the level of training and rules that would be required to implement this law without running aground of the Federal statute against racial profiling. Sec. Napolitano made the case that as long as the Congress failed to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) the door would be open to states taking matters into their own hands.
She also pointed out that there was a perception issue about border enforcement. While admitting that there was still too much illegal cross-border activity (drug and human smuggling going North, money and gun smuggling going South) the border had never been more secure than it was now. The number of border patrol agents has nearly doubled since 2006 and in some sectors of the border the numbers of arrests has plummeted. DHS has nearly completed all of the congressionally mandate upgrades to border enforcement.
This good news was did not fit into the narrative the Republican senators wanted to build. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) ignored this news to try to preemptively score points on CIR by insisting that we had to make it clear to the world that "the border is not open" before we could in any way shape or form address the issue of the 12 million or so informal immigrants currently living in the United States.
He was less than pleased when he got a flat "yes" when he asked if we could reasonably address this problem while still working to increase the security of our southern border. When he pushed Sec. Napolitano she reiterated that the numbers in every category of enforcement and recourses was at its highest level ever.
This did not stop Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) from bleating about the "war" on the boarder. Sen. Graham did make a couple of good and reasonable questions. He asked if the Secretary thought that we could round up 12 million people and if we could deport that number. He got a flat no on both questions and agreed with the Secretary. I would have personally liked it better if had just stopped there, but being Lindsey Graham he continued on.
Sen. Graham then got into a back and forth with the Secretary about whether it would be worse over all to try to pass CIR and have it fail than to do nothing right now while a war was raging at the border. He said that he was willing to bet everything he owned that there would not be 60 votes for CIR as long as the border remained unsecured. This, of courses, ignores the fact that it the Republicans standard of obstruction which requires rounding up 60 votes instead of having unanimous consent to begin debate. If Sen. Graham is so concerned about that he might work on his own caucus first.
The DHS Secretary replied that she would bet everything she owned that if Congress does not act then more states will enact laws like Arizona's which would complicate the issue even more. She also hit the Republicans on the moving goal line of a "secure border". She said that as a former Attorney General and two term Governor of a border state she had never seen the border as secure as it was now. While there would always be things that could be done to increase that, she did not think that focusing solely on closing the border would fix the overall problem.
There was some talk about what resources were needed to secure the border. Sen. John Kyl (R-TX) complained that there were only three Predator UAV operating on the border and none in his state of Texas. The Secretary explained that part of the reason is that the air space in Texas is much more congested than the other states and the FAA had not been able to complete the required changes to make it safe to operate this type of craft.
The hearing ended with questions from Sen. Arlen Specter (D(this week)-PA). He asked after the possibility of civil unrest if the Arizona law went into affect. Sec. Napolitano mentioned that the law does not go into affect until 90 days after the AZ legislature ends it session, which means sometime in August of this year. She was unwilling to say that there would be civil unrest, just that the law could potentially cause many problems; which problems it would actually create remained to be seen.
Sen. Specter then veered off into campaign mode asking if the Secretary thought that NAFTA has been a net benefit to Mexico. He couched the question in terms of increasing economic opportunity there, thus reducing the need to come to the U.S. for jobs. When the Secretary said she thought it had been better than nothing he asked if the United States had seen a net economic benefit. Being from a state where manufacturing jobs had been king and have been devastated this is a pretty transparent attempt to create a sound bite.
Sec. Napolitano did not really take the bait. She referred the Senator to the Department of Labor for those kinds of answers. She did, however, say that in regards to sharing of intelligence and law enforcement cooperation relationships with Mexico had never been better. She opined that NAFTA could have contributed to this. She was also clear that the overall economic situation with Mexico was far better than it would be if NAFTA had not been passed.
The rest of the hearing was typical oversight work, with Senators asking after specific projects in their states (Sen. Schumer asking after the Safe Cities program grants, Sen. Feinstein asking after increased maritime enforcement off of California). All in all the Senators seemed relatively happy with the performance of the DHS. If you would like to watch the whole thing (hopefully you are not that bored) you can find it at this link.
The floor is yours |
