During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) called for Secretary Kristi Noem to resign over her handling of FEMA in the wake of extreme floods in Texas.
00:00Mr. President, the Department of Homeland Security has an extremely important mission,
00:07keep Americans safe. And under that mission, the Department is tasked with two critical
00:14jobs, border security and disaster response. Mr. President, our current Secretary of Homeland
00:25Security, Kristi Noem, has failed both. In her short tenure, Secretary Noem has overstepped,
00:33underperformed and endangered the lives of countless Americans. Mr. President, I believe
00:41it is time for Secretary Noem to resign or for her to be fired. Mr. President, Secretary
00:50Noem has undermined FEMA's work and in so doing, endangered disaster victims. Just a few months
00:59ago, Secretary Noem said in a cabinet meeting, and I quote, we are eliminating FEMA. And she
01:07meant it. She meant it. And we saw evidence of that in what happened in Texas, not just
01:15in Texas, but in North Carolina, New Mexico, California, Kentucky, Hawaii, Vermont, where
01:22FEMA is absolutely crucial to helping people and communities and businesses recover from
01:29disaster. We need FEMA. And it's only the resources of the federal government that can surge resources
01:38into affected communities. And we can't lose that function and that capacity.
01:46When you need safety from a flood, when you need to start the long road to recovery, you
01:50need the support of the federal government. No state, no community cannot do this alone.
01:59But Mr. President, I have seen from our experience in Vermont that FEMA, in fact, must be reformed.
02:07It must not be destroyed, as Secretary Noem has suggested. My view, we cannot have a leader
02:14in charge of FEMA that is committed to its destruction. We must have one who is energetically committed
02:23to its reform. And we have seen the result of Secretary Noem's indifference to FEMA as the
02:31catastrophe in Texas unfolded. As the waters rose along the Guadalupe River in Hill Country,
02:40it was the people of Hill Country, as my colleague Representative Chip Roy of Texas said, who responded
02:47heroically. They were saving lives. They were rescuing stranded children. They were comforting
02:53those who lost loved ones. And they provided material assistance and constant support.
03:00As for FEMA, it didn't answer the phone. Secretary Noem had instituted a policy to micromanage FEMA to death.
03:11And under Secretary Noem's watch, FEMA instituted a new policy that required the Secretary's signature
03:19on any expense more than $100,000, which at the time of a major catastrophe is a very small amount. Secretary Noem had an
03:30eyes wide open awareness that this policy would mean it would take, quote, a minimum of five days for front office review.
03:42In a disaster, you do not have five days. Contractors for FEMA answered the vast majority of calls, about 3,000, from flood victims on July 5th.
03:55But according to news reports, after contracts with those companies were allowed to lapse,
04:04that response rate fell to 36% on July 6th, and then only 16% on July 7th, when people needed someone to answer the phone.
04:18FEMA left 13,793 calls unanswered.
04:25In the aftermath of disaster, people cannot wait for help.
04:30Many are homeless or living in very dangerous conditions.
04:34Search and rescue teams were waiting to be deployed.
04:38Disaster recovery centers were slow to open.
04:42current and former FEMA employees have raised the alarm about how slow the federal government was to respond and support Texas.
04:53We can reform FEMA in very common sense ways.
04:58And we must.
05:00But we cannot risk the lives of countless Americans under the mismanagement of a Secretary who has called for its elimination.
05:09But there's a second reason Secretary Ngo must resign.
05:16She's failing our country on immigration.
05:20Mr. President, we have three fundamental issues on immigration.
05:25border security, the deportation of criminals, and the status of people who are here without legal status but are working,
05:37they're paying taxes, in many cases have families, and have no criminal record.
05:44Mr. President, I want to step back for a minute and acknowledge something that too many Democrats have been too slow to state.
05:54The United States does need a secure border.
05:59And President Trump has largely accomplished that.
06:03In December 2023, there were 249,740 illegal crossing arrests between official ports of entry.
06:14That was an all-time high.
06:17Last month, that number dwindled to 6,070 illegal border crossing arrests.
06:25And I give President Trump credit for that change.
06:30The second issue is that undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes should be held accountable.
06:40They should be prosecuted, punished, and deported.
06:45There's widespread consensus on that.
06:48Yet on the third issue, those who are here without crime, who many cases were brought here as young people,
06:57we're seeing under the leadership of Secretary Noem that her response is an across-the-board embarkation on a massive and far-reaching deportation plan.
07:10There is no distinction in her policy among those who were brought here as children, who have families, who have jobs, who pay taxes, and who serve their communities.
07:24And, Mr. President, there is a big difference between deporting known criminals and rounding up immigrants,
07:33some of whom have status to be here, in fact, are here legally, from work sites, from schools, and from churches.
07:40This mass deportation policy is not about serving America and doing what our country needs to be strong and safe.
07:50It's instead about Secretary Noem accumulating the highest possible headcount of deportees.
07:59It's hurting those folks, their families, and their communities, of course.
08:05But it's also hurting America, and particularly rural America.
08:11Our farmers depend on labor to milk their cows, to pick their crops.
08:18It's weakening our construction industry, where workplace raids are shutting down construction sites,
08:24including for low-income housing, which we so desperately need.
08:29It's decimating our healthcare workforce in the hospitality industry in every state in the Union.
08:38Mr. President, we need a Homeland Security Secretary who will help us develop a sensible policy for folks who are here without status,
08:50but have no criminal record, who work, who have families, and are taxpayers.
08:57There's no restraint. There's no nuance. There's no judgment being applied by the department leader, the Secretary of Homeland Security,
09:06to develop a policy that makes sense.
09:09A policy that balances security and our economy.
09:14A policy that makes a distinction between law-abiding people who know no country other than the United States of America,
09:23versus criminals who should not be allowed to remain in the country.
09:29And finally, Mr. President, I have significant concerns about Secretary Noem's fiscal mismanagement and self-aggrandizement as DHS Secretary.
09:43This fiscal issue is particularly important in light of the billions of dollars that were allocated to that department in the recent legislation.
09:52Secretary Noem awarded as much as $200 million for an ad campaign that she started, thanking President Trump for his immigration policy
10:05and warning migrants in the U.S. to leave, a campaign that was reportedly awarded to Republican campaign consultants.
10:17Secretary Noem spent $21 million to transport 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay, $55,500 per person.
10:30Do we really need to spend that much?
10:33And several of those migrants were quickly transferred out of the facility.
10:38There are also too many instances of Secretary Noem putting her personal ambition ahead of her mission responsibility.
10:49She's posed for photos and videos using detained people as props.
10:54She's joined television interviews in various uniforms as a border patrol agent.
11:06She's treated ice raids as political theater.
11:09And while in Vermont, at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, it's a library that sits directly on the Vermont-Canadian border.
11:23The Secretary jumped from one side of the line in the middle of the library and parroted terrible things about Canada, 51st state.
11:37And then she jumped back at the United States, 51st state, the United States.
11:42That was deeply offensive to Vermonters who have an enormous amount of affection for our Canadian neighbors.
11:49And we've suffered the consequences of a dramatic downsizing of our tourism industry.
11:56Totally unnecessary, totally provocative, and wrong.
12:02Mr. President, we have an obligation to protect the safety of the families that all of us represent.
12:09And I urge every one of my colleagues to demand better for our constituents and for every American.
12:17We need a secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who puts public safety and preparedness before her personal image or political aspirations.
