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01:13detained, pregnant, and breastfeeding moms is obsolete or misaligned with your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