00:00Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Madam Secretary.
00:04Secretary Noem, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff recently said that the Trump administration is actively looking at suspending habeas corpus.
00:14Last week you were asked about this, and I want to clarify your position because it's obviously really important to get this right.
00:20So, Secretary Noem, what is habeas corpus?
00:24Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to...
00:32No, let me stop you, ma'am. Habeas corpus, excuse me, that's incorrect.
00:36President Lincoln used it.
00:38Excuse me. Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
00:48If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.
00:56Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.
01:03As a senator from the live free or die state, this matters a lot to me and my constituents and to all Americans.
01:10So, Secretary Noem, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?
01:22Yeah, I support habeas corpus.
01:24I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.
01:31It has never been done without approval of Congress.
01:36Even Abraham Lincoln got retroactive approval from Congress.
01:39So, I have been asking executive branch nominees a simple question over the past few months.
01:45If the president orders them to break the law, I've been asking, will you follow the law or follow the order?
01:51I want to ask you a more specific question here.
01:54If the president tries to suspend habeas corpus and a federal court reverses the president's order, will you comply with the court order and uphold habeas corpus, or will you follow the president's directive?
02:07We are following all federal court orders and are complying with that, as is the president and every decision that I make as well.
02:13Well, that is obviously not true for anybody who reads the news.
02:17There are federal court orders right now, including returning somebody who was deported mistakenly.
02:25I wouldn't rely on the news for your facts.
02:25But, to be clear, this is about a fundamental legal right that ensures that we live in a free society instead of a police state that would have a sham legal system like Russia or Korea, North Korea.
02:40So, I'm glad that you have now committed to following court orders.
02:44I'm glad you believe in the basic freedom for Americans, if ordered to do so by a court.
02:51And, again, I want just to make clear that it is critically important that even if the president tries to suspend the right of people to know why they've been detained or imprisoned,
03:02if a federal court reverses that order, that you will follow that order.
03:07And, I hope all members of the administration will, because it's obviously critical that some of the people, for instance, who've been deported by mistake, who didn't get due process, be returned in compliance with court orders.
03:22So, now, let's move on to another issue.
03:26International criminal organizations target Americans with sophisticated cyber crime, including elaborate scams that robbed Americans of billions of dollars,
03:36with seniors in the United States losing $5 billion to scammers in 2024 alone.
03:41As artificial intelligence improves, so does the ability of criminals to deceive and defraud Americans.
03:47With this new technology, criminals can impersonate loved ones, develop advanced malware, or make more convincing phishing messages.
03:56How is DHS working to identify trends in illegal activity and ensure that new AI systems have safeguards in place to prevent their use in criminal activity?
04:05Yes, we are working extensively through CISA, but in all of our agencies to make sure that we're growing, going after these criminal nefarious actors.
04:15I would say partnering with private industry is critically important so that we have the insight that we need to really understand the tactics that they use and the advancements in software.
04:24You know, the AI ability that they have to adjust and to supersede some of our systems is incredible.
04:32And so, investing in those systems is important, but also having the knowledge and bringing everybody to the table and breaking down the silos between our agencies and our intelligence agencies is important.
04:44So, we all have the information that we need to get.
04:46Well, and that gets me to one final point and question here, because Senator Peters began to ask about it.
04:53There's been recent reporting that indicates that the Chinese government installed remote access to Chinese-made power inverters in the U.S.,
05:01raising concerns that the Chinese government could try to disable parts of our power grid.
05:06And you made a comment following up on Senator Peters' question about the importance of not only working with private industry on this issue, as you would also want to work on AI, but also on working with state and local governments on cyber security.
05:22And can you just talk to me a little bit about how DHS is partnering with state and local governments right now on cyber?
05:26Well, that's one of the core critical missions of CISA, is to help those state and local governments harden their systems.
05:32We're extremely vulnerable by our weakest link.
05:37And so, when you have a small state that doesn't have the resources it needs to invest in these security operations,
05:44then they're vulnerable to attacks and hacking attempts, and they can access our systems.
05:49If they have a contract or a system that interfaces with the federal system, it makes us vulnerable as well.
05:54So, we are responsible for 10 of the 16 critical infrastructures under the Department of Homeland Security
06:00and making sure that China can't come in and shut down our electrical grid, our water systems,
06:05things that people rely on every day for their day-to-day lives is very important.
06:10So, that's why we need these kind of partnerships, is to make sure that we're secure all the way down to our smallest actor that participates.
06:17Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate working more with you on that. Thank you.
