Kristi Noem Details Vetting Of Chinese Nationals Who Came Through Southern Border Under Biden

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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.

Transcript

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.

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