Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at the Subcommittee Markup of the 2024 Homeland Security Funding Bill

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the subcommittee markup of the 2024 Homeland Security funding bill:

**as prepared for delivery**

Thank you, Chairman Joyce, Ranking Member Cuellar, and Chairwoman Granger for holding this markup today. Mr. Joyce, welcome to your first markup as Chairman of this subcommittee. I also thank the subcommittee staff for their work.

Before we begin today, I want to repeat what I said during markups yesterday and this morning. The bills being introduced this week would crumble if we learned the full scope of the proposed cuts that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going to make in the other bills in order to get to the 2022 level. These are cuts that will kick hundreds of thousands of families out of their homes and rob them of the child care that helps them keep their jobs. Cuts that pull elementary school teachers out of the classroom and put college and job training out of reach. Cuts that make our communities less safe and kick hundreds of local cops off the street. With this context, we should not even be considering the Homeland bill until we know the rest of the bills’ allocations.

Aside from being built on a house of cards, the bill before us today makes irresponsible investments that weaken our national security and harm the Homeland Security workforce. It will not get control at the border.

My Republican colleagues are once again proposing to waste billions of dollars on a useless and ineffective border wall – rather than focusing resources where we need them most, like combatting fentanyl entering through our ports of entry, supporting the Homeland Security workforce, discouraging the flow of migrants from Central America, helping our border communities, advancing our cybersecurity posture, and protecting our communities from violent extremism and foreign adversaries.

While the House Republicans are proposing to hold overall nondefense spending at 2022 levels, this bill would waste $3.7 billion – more than the bill’s entire increase – on border wall construction and ICE detention growth. We have a duty to spend taxpayer dollars wisely, not waste them on spending that would do nothing to make us more secure.

With this bill, we should instead focus on the work of the prior Congress to address longstanding issues at the southern border. The bill misses important opportunities to address the growing fentanyl and opioid crisis, provide more technology and officers at our ports of entry, and resource humane pathways and processes for folks who require refuge in our country, such as those fleeing oppression in Maduros’ Venezuela.

The bill falls flat across a number of other areas. It leaves Americans vulnerable to the growing number and increasing severity of natural disasters, weakens our national security through inadequate cyber and infrastructure security investments, and undermines the TSA workforce.

Lastly, I continue to be concerned about the conditions that migrants and asylum seekers find when they reach our borders—people who leave their homes out of desperation and necessity. We have a responsibility to ensure the safety of these migrants, especially that of children, and to provide the resources so that those entitled to stay can do so, and those who are not entitled to stay, depart. Please understand – by law – the United States is required to take in unaccompanied children, to house them, and to provide safe placement.

House Republicans claim to care about oversight, but the bill before us today proposes several cuts throughout DHS to programs critical to the oversight of our immigration detention facilities. It also eliminates discretionary funding for refugee processing, shifting the burden of those costs back to an already backlogged and overwhelmed system.

I reject the false dichotomy that we must leave our values at the door as we look to protect and strengthen our nation’s security. I am appalled that this bill chooses to promote that misguided ideology.

We all know any hope for enactment of appropriations will require bipartisan bills that make sound investments, not bills full of irresponsible and partisan policy riders. Yet again, a House Republican bill is moving us backward.

As the process moves forward, I hope this bill can be significantly improved so that we can manage our border responsibly and invest in programs that make our country more secure. I yield back.