Eric Schmitt Asks Judicial Nominee How USCIS Will 'Kick Out' Migrants After SCOTUS' TPS Ruling

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During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) spoke about the Supreme Court's ruling on Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan migrants.

Transcript

00:00or not we should set up a chair for a straw man for these hearings because these are all

00:05ridiculous straw man arguments. First of all, the President of the United States has said he would

00:09abide by court orders and this administration has abided by every single court order.

00:13So this contraption that Democrats continue to try to create, to create some faux

00:20constitutional crisis that doesn't exist or as it was during the campaign, some threat to

00:26democracy, to scare people, they ought to be ashamed of themselves because it hasn't

00:30happened. It hasn't happened and I want to give Mr. Woodward you an opportunity to respond

00:36when the Senator from California didn't give you the chance to respond with your answer before I

00:40go into my questions with a limited amount of time. Thank you, Senator. I will be brief and I

00:45will reiterate that I don't believe I would be ever be asked to advise my client to defy a court

00:52order. It's not happening. And so the answer, it depends, matters because there are, there is

00:59litigation all across this country right now. And so we have to look at each and every case

01:03very carefully. We advise the client and then the client acts. That is the role of the Department

01:08of Justice. I want to, Mr. Edlow, I do want to ask, I've been raising the alarm on this temporary

01:14protected status or TPS for quite some time now. And the Supreme Court has just weighed in

01:20and ruled essentially that Joe Biden had really been abusing his authority, especially at the end,

01:27just sort of waving a magic wand and really abusing this process. And so there are 350,000 Venezuelans

01:34now that will not receive this temporary protective status because they shouldn't have got it in the

01:38first place. I want to ask, how will the USCIS stop automatic renewals and kick out folks whose

01:46countries do not qualify anymore? Well, thank you for the question, Senator. As, as I stated earlier,

01:52the decision on whether to continue any TPS program rests with the secretary and USCIS would act

02:00accordingly. So depending on the, the country, depending on when the, uh, well, let's use these

02:07Venezuelans, uh, Senator, I would, I would hesitate to comment on anything that's under active

02:13litigation at this point. Okay. Let's say, um, let's say there's another, um, because I mean,

02:19let's say Haitians, which also fell into that. I want to know what tools, and I'm not asking you

02:24to opine on that. I want to know what tools are going to be used to enforce a lawful court order

02:28to kick people out of here. So certainly Senator, the employment authorization cards, which are,

02:36which are essentially the, uh, uh, evidence of the status are going to set to expire. Uh, the systems

02:43at USCIS, when appropriate are turned off so that renewals are either kicked out or, or rejected.

02:50And then at that point, uh, it becomes the responsibility of our sister agency, ICE, to work

02:56on the, uh, the next step, which would be the, uh, apprehension and removal of any individual that

03:01remained after that period of time. Um, so USCIS decides who qualifies for TPS.

03:09Well, after a TPS designation is made, USCIS would determine eligibility based on, based on

03:18the law. So they need to prove, uh, they've been here since the designation date and meet

03:22other rules, but the Biden administration, uh, made it with a rubber stamp, right? It, it totally,

03:27completely obliterated the process that was put in place. Is that your understanding?

03:31Senator, my, my understanding is everything the Biden administration did with regard to

03:35USCIS was with a rubber stamp. So yes, TPS, uh, the way in which parole was, was, uh, utilized,

03:43the way in which anything was utilized was a rubber stamp while not caring about the, the long

03:48lines of people within the backlog that just kept growing because they weren't taking that

03:52seriously. They were reassigning resources to just handle the unlawful border activity.

03:57Right. So what could be introduced, um, as far as new vetting rules, uh, to make sure this isn't

04:02just being handed out like candy, what could be done?

04:05Well, certainly if, if, uh, you know, if confirmed, I'm, I'm happy to work with Congress to figure out

04:10if there are additional authorities that we need in order to move in that direction. But I really do

04:16think that once confirmed, we can take a look at things internally, turn some processes on, act both

04:24regulatorily and sub-regulatorily to take a real bite out of some of this and to actually, for the

04:32first time, feel confident in the vetting that's being done by the agency. Um, thank you, Mr. Squire,

04:37or Mr. Squires, I do want to ask you, um, switching gears, um, uh, China's been ripping us off for a

04:45very long time as it relates to our IP. And I know there's a lot of concern with some of the breakthroughs

04:49they've gotten from deep seek. I mean, they don't, there's no IP, um, acknowledged really, if it's not

04:55being ripped off, it just isn't part of what they're, uh, um, and how they, how they handle these

05:00things. What, what concerns do you have or what can be done to combat Chinese IP theft? But then as we get

05:09into these large language models moving forward, how do you view a generally accepted IP, um, laws to be,

05:18how does it work into large language models moving forward? Because you've heard some people talk about

05:22just abandoning IP altogether. Thank you, Senator. It's a quite a complicated question. Mr. Squires, I know

05:30that it is. Could you submit that, uh, for the record? Because I'm very interested in the detailed

05:34response. I would be happy to, Senator. On behalf of the chair, Senator Lee.

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