'You Don't Know What Percentage?': Mazie Hirono Grills DEA Agent Over ICE Collaboration

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During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked agents from the DEA, HSI and FBI about what percentage of their resources were going to helping with immigration enforcement.

Transcript

00:00Chairman, we all know that there is a significant flow of firearms from the United States into the

00:07hands of these cartels, and I'm glad that Senator Durbin asked you all the question of what we can

00:13do to stop this flow, and most of which are coming from four states, Arizona, California,

00:21New Mexico, and Texas. And you all testified that, well, you really don't know what to do,

00:28that you kicked it off to the ATF, that they're supposed to be trying to stop the flow,

00:35the significant flow of firearms out from our country to Mexico. So that's your testimony,

00:43right? It's not your responsibility. It remains with ATF to figure this out.

00:50Anybody? Yes. You stay with it. That's not your responsibility. That's your testimony.

00:56No, ma'am. That's not my testimony, ma'am. I'm sorry, just to correct.

00:59Would you like to elaborate?

01:01Yes. At least on the piece of the-

01:02What you can do?

01:03Yes, ma'am.

01:03Mr. Stevens?

01:04Yes, ma'am.

01:06Briefly?

01:08So for us, we do see that as one of our responsibilities, and we're going to do that

01:12through the HSTFs, as that's one of the pillars of efforts that it refers to as it relates to that.

01:17So we're working and using our unique authorities to be able to work that together.

01:21So we are working hand-in-hand with them daily on operations as it relates to the outbound weapons.

01:27Can you provide the information to this committee what success that you are having in stopping the

01:32significant flow of firearms, and who are the people in our country who are selling these firearms?

01:38So I want to move on to the fact that you all work for agencies where we know that resources have been diverted

01:50from each of your agencies, probably, to engage in immigration enforcement.

01:57President Trump has made it clear that immigration enforcement is a priority for his regime,

02:03and to that end, for example, the FBI has reportedly been ordered to prioritize immigration,

02:09with some agencies being told to dedicate one-third of their time to immigration enforcement.

02:15So I would like to ask each of you, Mr. Allison, what percentage of DEA personnel,

02:24either through diversion of the hours of time that they're spending on immigration reform,

02:31to bodies who are spending time, I mean, what percentage of DEA is going to immigration enforcement?

02:40Ma'am, we don't really quantify it by percentages of people.

02:43I will tell you this, that DEA's involvement in any type of immigration enforcement is focused

02:49and narrow in scope, and we are primarily focused on the narcotics trafficking that oftentimes...

02:55So you don't know, you don't know what percentage of DEA is going toward immigration enforcement?

03:00I can only, I can only speak for the Los Angeles field division.

03:03I'm sorry?

03:04I can only speak for the Los Angeles field division of DEA, in my, as my role...

03:08And I'm having some difficult hearing, hearing you, so is it your testimony that you don't know?

03:14It's, I can't speak to that as...

03:15Okay, thank you.

03:16The information I have is 25% of DEA is going to immigration reform.

03:23Mr. Stevens, what percentage of HSI is going toward immigration enforcement?

03:28Thank you for your question, ma'am.

03:30I can't speak for the entirety of HSI, I can speak for my HSI El Paso field office.

03:35Each field office is unique and has its own major threats, and so the SACs have autonomy to be able to divert those resources,

03:42to be able to necessarily address immigration, drugs, whatever happens to be the major threats.

03:47I have human smuggling occurring in my offices daily,

03:51so I have a significant number of resources dedicated to what would be referred to as immigration enforcement.

03:57And what percentage, what constitutes significant to you?

04:01I have approximately four groups that are dedicated to working human smuggling investigations,

04:05which would be about 28 people in my El Paso office.

04:11The information I have is that it is unclear as to what percentage, if we can talk about it in those terms.

04:17It would be helpful for us to know what kind of diversion of resources is happening toward immigration reform,

04:23as opposed to the law enforcement and the drug enforcement activities that you all are supposed to be engaged in,

04:30that in the case of HSI, it is that scores of agents have been reassigned, literally reassigned to immigration reform.

04:39FBI, Mr. Perez, what percentage of FBI resources are going toward immigration?

04:47Yes, ma'am. I don't have an exact percentage.

04:49I can tell you that over the last several months,

04:51that we've been involved in supporting our DHS counterparts,

04:53the number ebbs and flows from smaller to maybe surges at a time or two.

04:58I will tell you, though, the success of what we're doing in the immigration front when we first started.

05:02We've identified close to 800 predicated FBI subjects that were in violation of some type of immigration status.

05:08We've been able to leverage that tool, that partnership, to disrupt everything from terrorists to spies to gangs.

05:14Excuse me, I am running out of time, but I just want to say that these are important questions for us to know,

05:20because you all are supposed to be, you have your mission.

05:22One wonders if, for example, the information I have is that with regard to FBI,

05:2745% of agents in 25 large field offices are working immigration full-time.

05:3545%.

05:38And as for the ATF, 80% are working on immigration enforcement, at least part of the time.

05:47So there's a significant diversion of resources toward immigration reform,

05:51as opposed to the stuff that you all are supposed to be doing.

05:54Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

05:55Senator Schmidt.

05:56Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

05:57And just to follow up with that, I hope you do more deportations.

06:01I hope you help find more.

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