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Lauren Underwood Grills Acting CBP Commissioner Over Revoked Policies Protecting Vulnerable ICE Detainees
Forbes Breaking News
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5/16/2025
During Thursday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) questioned Acting Customs And Border Protection Commissioner Pete Flores about revoked policies.
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00:00
awareness. Okay, well given the known challenges of staffing the northern
00:03
border, I look forward to working with you on the ways that we in Congress can
00:06
help staff those hard-to-fill locations. Moving on, I'm deeply concerned about a
00:11
memo that you issued on May 5th that revoked four CBP policies protecting
00:15
vulnerable people in your custody, including seniors, pregnant women, and
00:18
kids. One of the four policies that you revoked was on the processing of pregnant
00:23
and postpartum non-citizens and infants. That policy is what keeps moms in
00:29
custody healthy. It doesn't require anything fancy. In fact, I'm a nurse and
00:34
I can tell you it's really barely the basics. Things like a place to sit or lie
00:38
down or an extra juice or snack for pregnant and breastfeeding moms. The
00:43
only justification in your memo for revoking this policy was that it was
00:47
quote either obsolete or misaligned with current agency guidance and immigration
00:52
enforcement priorities. Now of course CBP is fundamentally not built for
00:58
detention, but there are many situations where detention occurs, sometimes long
01:02
term, and it's critical that CBP have high standards in place to protect
01:06
detainees and personnel. So tell me, what specifically about juice and seeding for
01:13
detained, pregnant, and breastfeeding moms is obsolete or misaligned with your
01:18
current guidance and priorities?
01:19
Congressman, thank you for the question. So I would say that when we have 20,000
01:25
people in custody every single day, we have 15,000 people sitting underneath the
01:30
bridge and we have a couple hundred large groups sitting in the desert, creating
01:35
additional mechanisms to sort through those masses to ensure that we're taking
01:39
care of the vulnerable became absolutely necessary as we sort through that
01:43
population to make sure that we're expediting care and processing for those
01:49
individuals that we have either in a facility or out on the border some at some
01:54
location. Today's numbers, we look at our custody numbers today, we have anywhere
01:59
from 500 to 700, 800 individuals in custody. We're seeing less than 300 a day come
02:05
across our borders. So with those numbers, we can operationalize and ensure that we're not
02:11
minimizing the care that we're taking care of those individuals in our custody.
02:16
Because in that memo as well, I emphasize that the priority of taking care of
02:23
individuals in our custody remains a priority for us.
02:26
So our ability to be able to get through, care for, and meet all the requirements of
02:32
those in our custody based on 500 or 800 individuals being in our custody, right, we're
02:38
able to meet those needs and be able to meet- Right, but Mr. Commissioner, you know, if you
02:43
remove the standards of care that offer baseline, basic criteria for how to care for a
02:50
vulnerable population like a pregnant person and that would direct your agents and officers
02:55
to offer that individual juice or snack or place to sit, if we are not issuing that as
03:00
basic policy, then it might not happen. And so I appreciate that encounters are down.
03:06
And that is a fantastic thing. That is something that this committee celebrates, in fact.
03:11
But as you reaffirm, you do have a baseline standard for caring for people in your custody.
03:17
And so what I'm going to ask is that you commit to immediately reinstating this policy
03:21
or a new one, or a new one that reflects the current dynamic with lower levels of encounters
03:28
that would have higher standards for pregnant and postpartum moms. Will you commit to that?
03:34
So I definitely take that back, Congresswoman, as we look through this. So what I would tell
03:38
you is that when we do have 20,000 people in custody, it was difficult to find space to
03:45
allow that to occur. So we had to prioritize that in order to allow that to occur, to find
03:50
a place to sit, to get juice or snacks. And we're still doing the same thing. It's just
03:55
we do not have the space limitations today in our facilities to find a place to allow someone
04:01
to sit or to have juice or to have those snacks.
04:04
Mr. Chairman, you know, I think that this committee would be willing to find the resources to properly
04:09
care for pregnant moms, postpartum moms, kids, elders that are in CBP's care. And I'm going
04:15
to continue to impress upon the agency the urgency of reinstating this type of policy. It's not
04:21
optional. And I yield back.
04:23
Thank you. We now go to the gentlelady from Iowa, which represents the home of the river
04:32
buoy tender, Wyaconda, for your questions for the acting commissioner. The floor is yours.
04:38
Yes. And thank you for hearing me out during our Coast Guard hearing yesterday about our need
04:42
for a new school manager.
04:45
info.
04:46
Orange.
04:47
Orange.
04:47
John.
04:58
Brown.
04:59
The north.
05:01
halls.
05:02
The south.
05:02
Long.
05:04
Black.
05:04
Maroc.
05:05
The north.
05:06
And now this is really not bouncing.
05:07
The north!
05:08
為什麼.
05:09
We are good.
05:09
And now they are good.
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