At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) questioned President Trump's nominee to lead the DHS's Citizenship Services agency, and slammed efforts to slow Trump's deportation efforts.
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00:00Back, Mr. Chairman.
00:03On behalf of the Chair, Senator Moody.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chair.
00:07I appreciate all of you being here.
00:10It's never an easy thing to sit and stand for questions among all of my esteemed colleagues.
00:16Thank you very much, and thank you to your families.
00:18I often find these are harder on our families than it is on the folks taking the incoming questions.
00:23So thank you very much.
00:24Thank you very much.
00:54Thank you so much.
00:56And we are at a time where we have an incoming administration that is having to marshal resources to deal with a mess and a dangerous situation like we have never seen, maybe outside wars.
01:09We are having to, not only human resources, but the financing to deal with one of the largest influxes of folks surging into this nation.
01:23Some say 11 million, some say up to 20 million.
01:26If you take the more conservative number, that's more than the population in 42 of our states.
01:32Most of those were barely vetted.
01:34Many of them, we don't know what their backgrounds are.
01:37Many have proven to be really dangerous criminals, leading to rapes, murders, robberies, aggravated assaults.
01:42I could go on and on and on.
01:43I saw it firsthand as Florida's attorney general and fought very hard to stop what was happening.
01:49But it became very clear that there was an intentional destruction of any semblance of security at our border.
01:55We saw this because we saw known people on the terrorist watch list and other criminals that we later found.
02:02And it was a cover-up.
02:03We had both administration, our president, a secretary putting in charge of DHS say our border was secure the whole time.
02:12So now you come in at a time where you are going to have to use the law to help remedy what we are faced with.
02:21And I am grateful for a president that came in and has tried as fast as possible to remedy the situation that we as America find ourselves in.
02:29But you are going to have to deal with what's left by somebody who is supposed to be a commander-in-chief protecting this nation.
02:39This morning I introduced an expedited removal of criminal aliens act.
02:44This has been getting a lot of attention because you have an administration trying to use what law is available to them.
02:50Some as far back as the Alien Enemies Act.
02:54But you have to use, I think that was in the 1700s, and people are criticizing them for that.
02:59But we are in historic, unprecedented time.
03:02So you have to use the tools that are available to you to protect this nation and its people.
03:07As the courts are trying to figure out what that looks like, many are frustrated because it appears so many of these district courts are trying to stymie this president and indeed what you will be charged with of delivering a remedy, a recovery, and the protection of our people.
03:25But in the meantime, we need to start moving here in Congress to ensure an expedited process to get these dangerous people out of here.
03:33I'm going to start with you.
03:36The person that I had the privilege of introducing, Mr. Edlow, is an act like this needed and it can be useful to this administration.
03:48Senator, first of all, thank you so much for the kind introduction.
03:50I greatly appreciate it.
03:53I'm aware of your legislation.
03:55I look forward to, if confirmed, working with you and with our departmental partners to see it move forward.
04:02I think it's absolutely necessary.
04:04And as a result of all of the litigation around the nation, it is often said by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that they,
04:16and they point out that this administration has had more orders against them.
04:22As we are trying to show, this is probably because these nationwide injunctions and other decisions are certain courts trying to stymie this administration
04:31and being effective and delivering on promises to the American people to secure this nation again.
04:36One might say this shouldn't be surprising because you have an administration that's doing their job and using the law on the books in a way we haven't had to use them before
04:47because of the unprecedented, dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, some would say criminal actions of the last administration.
04:56Would you agree, Mr. Woodward?
04:58Senator, thank you for taking the opportunity to meet with me.
05:01And as you and I discussed, I do agree.
05:02I'm very passionate about that.
05:04There is a tremendous amount of litigation in the courts right now because President Trump is doing a tremendous amount.
05:09He's being challenged, but he is also asserting his Article II powers in a way that no president has ever done before.
05:16Or had to do.
05:17Or had to do.
05:19And so, if confirmed, I look forward to assisting the president and professionally litigating and defending his exercise of those Article II powers as often as is needed.
05:28On behalf of the chair, Senator Schiff.