At Tuesday's House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) questioned DHS Sec. Kristi Noem about Chinese nationals coming through the southern border.
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00:00Second round of questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you again for your patience, Madam Secretary.
00:04And we know, obviously, states like mine, Iowa and South Dakota, are not necessarily border states,
00:09but certainly every state did become a border state under the previous administration with that chaos we saw.
00:14And the consequences of that porous border really reach far beyond the Rio Grande River there,
00:20the deadly fentanyl coming into our communities, the adversaries taking advantage and exploiting our immigration system.
00:26And so that's what I kind of want to touch on is the adversaries and what they were able to do, specifically China.
00:32To put it in perspective, in the first seven months of fiscal year 2024,
00:37more than 27,000 Chinese nationals were encountered at the southern border.
00:41Under President Trump, we've seen that number drop significantly, reflecting that clear shift in deterrence and enforcement.
00:48So can you walk us through what specific mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that these individuals from adversarial nations
00:55are now being thoroughly vetted and how that process has changed since the previous administration?
01:01Yes.
01:01And, you know, every country is being treated the same as far as how we are treating the folks that are there and here illegally.
01:08People that came into this country from China and from other countries are all being vetted
01:15and their background checks being gone through.
01:18And I would say some of the reasons that we've had to reevaluate some of the programs that were abused under the Biden administration
01:23is because countries weren't participating with us.
01:25They weren't sharing their information.
01:28One of the things I've challenged Canada with in a lot of the discussions that we've had over recent months
01:33was they weren't taking their own citizens back home that were here in this country illegally,
01:37and they weren't sharing all of the criminal background checks of individuals who were in our country illegally.
01:42They weren't telling us who they were or what they had done,
01:45if they had human smuggling in their background or crimes.
01:48And so that was some of the access that we were asking them for.
01:51We were grateful that they addressed, for instance, designating a fentanyl czar and doing.
01:57But that information sharing is critically important, and we do not have that kind of partnership with China.
02:02We didn't just see Chinese nationals infiltrate our country over the southern border.
02:06They're coming over the northern border as well.
02:08And we see needs on the Great Lakes region and people coming in.
02:13It's easy to access Canada, and once they do, then they drop down into our vulnerable areas.
02:18So we have continued to maintain resources and strengthen them at the northern border as well.
02:23But we work closely with Interpol that has an agreement with many different countries
02:28to do vetting and background checks and criminal background information sharing on folks across the world.
02:35But many of the times when the State Department is negotiating on repatriation and travel documents,
02:42they are having discussions on what we can do to share information.
02:45When I made trips to El Salvador, to Colombia, and to Mexico, those trips were made so that I could get those governments
02:51to share more information with us.
02:53In fact, one of the things that we did while we were there is sign new agreements with those countries
02:57to share more data and information, to have them give us biometric information that they collected,
03:03to give us more thorough travel documents of individuals that were of concern here
03:08and had been breaking our laws.
03:10And so having those discussions gives us more information to make sure that this country is safer into the future.
03:16Do you feel like those conversations have helped to inform broader national security efforts?
03:21Absolutely.
03:22Cross-departmentally?
03:23And, you know, when we think about the real risk here, it's these international transnational criminal gangs,
03:28the cartels, state-sponsored networks.
03:31You know, obviously we talk about the Chinese nationals, and the reason the PRC is not cooperating
03:35and the CCP is not cooperating is because they are intent on infiltrating our country.
03:39That is correct.
03:39Do you feel like all those relationships are really helping us to strengthen the intel that we are able to gather?
03:44Absolutely.
03:45We've seen many, many times where information that we got on somebody who was here that may have been on our terrorist watch list,
03:51suspected terrorist watch list, or someone who is a very dangerous part of a foreign terrorist organization,
03:57that information may have been shared with us from another country because of those security agreements that we have in place.
04:04And when countries do not adhere to sharing that type of information,
04:10they don't get the privileges necessary that have been granted to them in the past.
04:13And we've seen that with visa overstays.
04:16We've seen that with lack of information sharing that perhaps they don't get to continue in programs
04:21that are under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security because they haven't been willing partners
04:26to help us secure our country.
04:27Yes, certainly.
04:27Accountability is back, and I appreciate that.
04:30So thank you so much, Madam Secretary.
04:32I yield back.