Thread by @ReichlinMelnick

Good morning! Today the Senate Judiciary Committee is having a hearing Sen. Graham's "Secure and Protect Act," his plan to rewrite asylum laws.

Importantly, this will be Acting DHS Secretary @DHSMcAleenan's first appearance since Friday's tariffs announcement.

I'm livetweeting!

The @NatImmForum has a great explainer on Sen. Graham's bill, which is here.

The bill would allow for vastly expanded detention of families and children, block asylum for anyone not going to a port of entry, and create other new limits on asylum.

immigrationforum.org/article/bill-s…

Given that today's hearing comes just days after the tariff "deal," we should expect Senators on both sides of the aisle to question @DHSMcAleenan about the details.

I wrote about the tariff deal yesterday here, and why we should remain skeptical of it.
immigrationimpact.com/2019/06/10/tru…

Key among the tariff deal's provisions is the expansion of the "Migrant Protection Protocols," also known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy, also known as the #MigrantPersecutionProtocols to some activists.

Here's more about where the program stands now. cbsnews.com/news/remain-in…

As the hearing gets underway, you can follow along with it as well here.

We'll begin with opening statements from Lindsey Graham then move on to questioning. judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/the-s…

As we start, Sen. Graham says he's going to send a bill to markup on the supplemental funding request from the DHS, after an agreement with Senator Shelby. They'll be marking up the bill in the appropriations committee next week, apparently.

We're starting with @LindseyGrahamSC pulling out charts and having some staffer hold it up, then asks rhetorically "Why, what has changed?"

Graham then repeats claims that have been made multiple times, that "the word is out" in Central America about asylum.

We continue in the show and tell portion of the hearing, with Graham having someone hold up several different supposed price comparisons of the costs smugglers charge to bring people to the US.

Worth noting, of course, that Trump's chaotic border policy has fueled this.

Graham says the first demonstrably false thing of the hearing, saying "Contrary to what you may have heard, most people don't show up" to immigration court.

This is fundamentally false, something I've repeatedly debunked. immigrationimpact.com/2019/01/30/asy…

As Graham explains more about the provisions of his bill, let me again make clear that, in reality, more than 80% of people show up in immigration court.

As studies have shown, families actually show up at a higher rate than single adults.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1120807194935611392

Graham makes the goal of his bill clear: "If it got out in Central America you could no longer apply for asylum in the United States, they would stop coming."

But asylum isn't the only humanitarian protection. And people fleeing harm will flee towards safely.

Graham also makes clear that he disagrees with @realdonaldtrump about border barriers, saying that "A wall will not fix this problem" because people seeking asylum can begin the process as soon as entering the United States.

He's certainly right about walls.

We now move on to @SenFeinstein, who begins by noting that in fifteen previous years, apprehensions had been over 1,000,000. She then notes that the big difference between then and now is about WHO is coming, not how many, and that it's largely families.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1136330070996525062

Now @SenFeinstein is discussing dangerous overcrowding in CBP facilities, citing last month's @DHSOIG report about serious threats to life and health in Border Patrol facilities. Here's more on that report and the appalling conditions described in it.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1134506929542352897

Following the discussion of conditions in Border Patrol custody, @SenFeinstein now discussing the awful conditions in ICE custody, reporting on OIG's report from last Friday about four detention facilities. Here's more on that.

https://twitter.com/heidiraltman/status/1136662500542279680

Now @SenFeinstein talks about her bill, the " Protecting Immigrant Families and Improving Immigration Procedures Act," which primarily works to speed up the asylum process, clear backlogs, and add more protections.

Here's more on that bill. judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/rele…

Feinstein is discussing a key component of her bill, which would provide counsel for children. She notes the images of a toddler appearing in immigration court on his own, and calls for lawyers to be provided to kids.

She ends by discussing the trauma of family separation.

Now on to Sen. @JohnCornyn, who says that smugglers have "found a way to exploit the vulnerabilities in our laws."

Of course, the laws haven't changed in decades, and smugglers have known about them for all that time—but conditions in Central America have changed.

Sen. @JohnCornyn now mentions the @nytimes Editorial Board piece from Sunday, which was.... very problematic. That piece called on Congress to stop "dithering."

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1138083604179955712

In a small bit of irony, @JohnCornyn says that Congress's failures to act have justified Trump taking his unprecedented actions on immigration.

Of course, when Obama said Congress's failure to act was justification for DACA, Cornyn felt... very different.

Now Cornyn addresses his OWN bill to change asylum laws, the "Humane Act," a version of which he's introduced for years now.

Here's more about his bill. cornyn.senate.gov/content/news/c…

We move now to an opening statement from Sen @DickDurbin, who calls the situation at the border the result of Trump's failed policies. He's now listing Trump actions which have added to chaos:

- Muslim ban
- Ending DACA/TPS
- Shutdown
- Cuts to legal immigration
- DHS chaos

Now @DickDurbin says that by all metrics, the border is less secure than when Trump took office.

But as I pointed out earlier today, in some metrics the border is much safer, including the fact that FAR fewer people with criminal records are coming.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1138444458679308288

Durbin now discussing how this isn't necessarily Congress's fault, and cites repeated failed attempts at immigration in the past, including the Gang of 8 bill, the Dream Act, and more recent bills which Trump scuttled through demands for massive cuts to legal immigration.

Durbin emphasizes his opposition to Graham's bill: "The bill before us provides no assurance that children will be humanely treated or be safe from violence once they are deported."

He calls for cooperation on a bill which would focus on push factors, not just pull factors.

Now on to @DHSMcAleenan for an opening statement. He emphasizes similar themes to his prior times in front of Congress, citing high levels of families and children in comparison to low numbers of single adults coming. He calls for money to build tent camps for CBP processing.

McAleenan says that the increase in families is a "direct response" to asylum laws.

But, again, asylum laws have been unchanged for over 20 years. The Flores settlement is from 1997. What no one has explained is why, if it's just our laws, has it suddenly started now?

And @DHSMcAleenan now cites "routine" advertisements in TV and radio in Central America saying that if you bring a child to the US, you'll be released.

Of course, I've never actually seen someone show a copy of one of those ads, and DHS has never actually shown one either.

As he ends, McAleenan says that the Flores settlement is the reason we can't "get immigration results" for families.

What Flores said is that, because we are a nation that cares for children, we can't lock up kids for extended periods of time in unlicensed facilities.

Now on to questioning! @LindseyGrahamSC begins by asking about "pull factors," and then gets McAleenan to list some.

McAleenan says we are seeing "enormous numbers of fraudulent cases," emphasizing the "fake families" claims.

In reality, it's much less than <1%.

Graham asks McAleenan about appearance rates in immigration court.

McAleenan then repeats a totally misleading claim about 90% of families not showing up in court.

This is a complete misrepresentation of the real statistics, which I explained here.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1126218053442777093

Our study of families released from detention between 2001-2016 showed that 86% showed up in court, rising to 96% when they have lawyers.

By contrast, McAleenan's claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of "completion-based" statistics.
americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/detai…

Now onto @SenatorLeahy, who begins by recounting times in which bipartisan immigration bills have been scuttled by small Republican minorities, asserting that the Hastert Rule (no bipartisan bills unless majority of Republicans support) has prevented real compromise.

.@SenatorLeahy asks McAleenan about his support for bills which would address push factors in Central America. McAleenan agrees with the idea of push factors but disagrees with Leahy on specific ones.

Of course, Trump famously disagrees with McAleenan's dual-pronged approach.

Shifting to ICE, @SenatorLeahy asks @DHSMcAleenan about the GAO report that ICE failed to follow its own rules requiring higher scrutiny of veterans before deporting them. Here's more info on it.

McAleenan says he's looking into the GAO report. cnn.com/2019/06/06/pol…

Leahy now asks @DHSMcAleenan about "fake families," and notes that ICE HSI has identified >200 cases of an individual claiming to be the parent of a child that wasn't theirs.

It's definitely awful when it occurs, but at the same time, that's a tiny fraction of overall claims.

Leahy ends by saying to @DHSMcAleenan "I'm glad you're there" (at DHS). We then move to @ChuckGrassley, who continues on the theme of child smuggling.

Once again, yes, child smuggling is a thing and awful when it occurs. But the VAST majority, >99%, of families are real.

Grassley now attacks @AppropsDems for calling for cuts to ICE funding, somehow conflating cuts to detention budgets with the idea that Democrats are in support of "child smuggling and child recycling."

Grassley has @DHSMcAleenan agree that cutting DHS funds is bad, blaming Dems.

Grassley spent almost all of his five minutes discussing "child recycling," for which I believe only a tiny handful of people have ever been criminally charged, saying "it's outrageous we can't pass legislation to correct this."

But "child recycling" IS already illegal!

Now back to @SenFeinstein, who asks how many families have been separated since June 26th, when families were ordered reunited in the Ms. L litigation.

@DHSMcAleenan does not have an exact number, and tells Feinstein he'll get it to her.

.@SenFeinstein moves on to horrific conditions in CBP custody, some of which have led to deaths. She asks whether Wilmer Ramirez, a child who died after being held in @CBP custody, was one of the children held under a bridge in El Paso.

bbc.com/news/world-lat…

Now @DHSMcAleenan trying to make clear that he's said conditions in CBP custody are "unacceptable" (true) repeatedly in the past.

He says "I share your concern about these conditions. I've been raising that for months on end."

But he's the one in charge!

.@SenFeinstein asks about conditions in ICE detention, and @DHSMcAleenan somewhat outrageously claims that OIG reports have focused on minor issues, saying "Any issue that effects the safety of detainees is addressed immediately."

This is appallingly untrue. People are dying.

An official in ICE's Health Services Corps wrote to the head of ICE and said that "preventable deaths had occurred" because IHSC is "severely dysfunctional."

@DHSMcAleenan is utterly wrong if he thinks ICE addresses safety issues immediately. It doesn't.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1135579639617851394

We're now on to @SenMikeLee, who got @DHSMcAleenan to talk about how drug smugglers are taking advantage of families seeking asylum to sneak in. Lots of claims from CBP about this, but it's hard to quantify.

Now @SenMikeLee asks about asylum timelines if families are detained, with @DHSMcAleenan citing 45 day averages for court proceedings in family detention.

Averages are an awful measurement. Most people gave up early, never seeking asylum. For those who continued it took months.

This isn't the first time @DHSMcAleenan or the government have made this claim; that detained cases take 30-60 days "on average."

The fundamental problem with this is that when a majority of people give up on the first hearing, that skews averages WAY downwards.

Back to @DickDurbin, who demands actual numbers of "fake families" and asks for some sense of scale.

@DHSMcAleenan says over 3 days, CBP flagged 109 people as potentially fake families, and DNA tests confirmed CBP's hunch for 17 people.

So... CBP was wrong in 86% of cases?

I've got to say, @DHSMcAleenan's numbers really, really don't seem to support what he's saying.

If CBP is flagging less than 1% of people as possibly fraudulent, and CBP is only right 15% of the time... this is not a big problem. It's a TINY problem, a minuscule problem.

Sen. @DickDurbin pushing hard against McAleenan now on the Trump administration's shutting down of the Central American Minors program, with @DHSMcAleenan saying that's not an issue.,

Now @DHSMcAleenan pushing back HARD against McAleenan's claims on families not showing up in court, citing numbers directly from EOIR, from our studies, and from other things.

He makes a great point that when people get resources, they do show up.

An interesting pushback from @DHSMcAleenan who implies that immigration court appearances are not that important (huh?) because people who show up for court may not report for deportation, saying even with 100% appearance rates for family case management, many weren't deported.

Now @LindseyGrahamSC emphasizes this point, admitting that when families are represented, they are more likely to appear in court (which @DHSMcAleenan agrees to as well), but goes back to deporting those with final orders of removal.

Graham ends with "I think you're both right."

Now to @HawleyMO, who goes back to the question of so-called "child recycling" and says it's "inexcusable" that Congress hasn't done anything about this.

@DHSMcAleenan then gives numbers!

Three. Three cases of child smuggling "rings," which is already massively illegal!

I'm really not trying to downplay the horror of selling a child to bring to the US. That is an appalling illegal thing to do which I think everyone on both sides agrees is awful and should be cracked down on.

But it occurs in a TINY fraction of cases, despite @DHS's focus on it.

.@SenHawley calls Congress's inaction "the worst failure of leadership" to address "child recycling." Once again, that is already a crime!

In essence, Hawley's is arguing that we need to turn away hundreds of thousands of kids fleeing harm... in order to protect a few dozen.

Now to @amyklobuchar, who asks my question: "Why is the situation different now?" McAleenan mentions what he calls a "reinterpretation" of Flores in 2015 (of course, that depends on your point of view).

Klobuchar asks if the President's chaotic actions have led to any of this.

.@DHSMcAleenan fully rejects any suggestion that Trump's chaos has helped smugglers, saying "I don't know how you ascribe the administration's policies to secure the border—"

But basic marketing says "Get it now, or it'll be gone" is a powerful selling tool.

Sen. @amyklobuchar asks again about the Central American Minor program, which @DHSMcAleenan says didn't actually do much. Here's some more information on the program, at the time it ended. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…

Now @amyklobuchar asks @DHSMcAleenan's whether he'll commit to publicly releasing investigations in the death of children in CBP custody, and whether he'll work on regaining trust.

McAleenan says he'll share @DHSOIG reports on those deaths, and has invested in more medical care.

.@amyklobuchar into some Administrative Procedures Act deep cuts, citing high rate of government failures in court on challenged actions.

McAleenan kind of punts and says "We don't have results in most of those cases."

cnbc.com/2019/01/24/tru…

We move to Senator Kennedy, who asks @DHSMcAleenan to explain what a "Safe Third Country" deal is (what he calls "safe third party" at first), and asks whether Safe Third can be put into the USMCA.

McAleenan doesn't answer that directly, because obviously that couldn't happen.

As Kennedy pontificates on what he thinks Safe Third Country should look like, a brief correction!

In this tweet, I messed up, I should have said the person pushing back hard was @DickDurbin, not McAleenan. Hope people figured that out from context.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1138465816037470208

Sen. Kennedy with a real galaxy brain question on appearance rates.

"If 90% of the people who are in our country illegally are showing up for their hearings... how did we get 11 million people in our country illegally?"

Now to Sen. @maziehirono, who gets McAleenan to agree that aid to Central America is an important part of addressing the situation at the border.

Hirono says: "In the meantime, we're not getting on with what we need to do, which I think is ... get[ting] to the root causes."

.@maziehirono asks whether McAleenan thinks the Trump administration is actually carrying out a multi-pronged approach to the border (addressing both push and pull factors), and McAleenan says he does.

Hirono points out that McAleenan's been stingy with info on this.

Sen. @maziehirono is clearly peeved at McAleenan for coming to the hearing without the exact number of children that have been separated since Zero Tolerance ended, saying he should have expected they'd ask this (and they have indeed asked in the past).

.@DHSMcAleenan says that families are being separated in less than "one half of one percent," and says separations are only for safety of the child.

But Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost testified before that families are separated if a parent has a felony reentry conviction.

Now to Senator @MarshaBlackburn, who begins by saying that on a recent trip to El Paso, she was "really grateful" for the service of DHS officials who've volunteered to come to the border. "This is just such a heart-wrenching situation, especially when you look at the children."

Sen. @MarshaBlackburn focusing on ORR's decisions to release children to sponsors in the United States, saying she's worried about releasing kids to undocumented sponsors.

The problem is, if you target undocumented sponsors, kids stay in ORR custody for months longer.

McAleenan describes the release of children TO THEIR OWN PARENTS as "a continued challenge in this cycle" when the parents are themselves undocumented.

This is why the law needs to be carried out with some sense of prosecutorial discretion. Targeting sponsors = kids in shelters.

Now to @SenBlumenthal, who, like many today, begins by touting the work of dedicated DHS officers. He then asks about Friday's tariff deals, and questions McAleenan about Trump's claim of a "secret deal," and if that exists.

McAleenan becomes VERY evasive, won't directly answer.

.@SenBlumenthal is unhappy with @DHSMcAleenan's evasiveness about the Trump claim of a "secret deal," saying "With all due respect, you are failing in your duty to come before this committee and fully disclose what the commitments of this nation are with respect to immigration."

.@SenBlumenthal asks @DHSMcAleenan about the news yesterday of a leak of facial recognition data. McAleenan says they are looking into this, but says that the data was only from a pilot program at a few numbers of ports of entry. dallasnews.com/business/techn…

We move to @SenThomTillis, who asks about Border Patrol recruiting. McAleenan says recruitment efforts are improving, noting that Border Patrol reversed a 4-year decline last year.

True, but it was only by 118 total agents, and only three along the southern border.

Tillis asking about the reports of smugglers using large groups of families crossing in order to smuggle in more drugs.

CBP has been raising the alarm about this for months, but again, it's hard to quantify the scale of this problem.

.@DHSMcAleenan said earlier that just 30% of people crossing the border are seeking to evade capture, something I didn't notice. So very low.

Now Thillis asks about illness, saying "the public health crisis is something we haven't talked about."

McAleenan says there are 250 cases of H1N1 flu in the Rio Grande Valley, with individuals quarantined in a CBP facility.

What he doesn't say—overcrowding leads to outbreaks!

On to @SenWhitehouse, who asks "What are the conditions" in Central America.

@DHSMcAleenan says "The number one issue is poverty and lack of economic opportunity," and then follows up by saying he believes that violence is not the number one reason.

Looks like I screwed up the thread. It continued here.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1138478157349236736

.@SenWhitehouse asking about private prison operators who control much ICE detention, asking what "conflicts of interest" are there for expanded ICE detention, highlighting profit incentive to hold families and children for longer.

@DHSMcAleenan defends ICE contracting, and...

McAleenan points out children are held in ORR custody, not ICE custody. Fair point, and he's right that ORR shelters are almost all run by nonprofits (some of which have issues, but still).

That said, McAleenan's contracting defense is very weak. oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/…

Back to Sen. @maziehirono, who notes that @DHSMcAleenan didn't answer her question about Trump's alleged offer of a pardon for ignoring immigration.

Hirono turns back to the bill at issue, and asks about alternatives to detention, and McAleenan's claim they don't work.

Sen. @MazieHirono asks @DHSMcAleenan about an OIG report saying that family case management worked. "What fact-based evidence like this report do you have to support" the claim that ATDs don't work?

McAleenan says of Family Case Management that there are >100 final orders of removal for people under FCMP "that have not be fulfilled," and agrees to share data.

Big question; how many of those are in the appeals process? This could well be the cause. We need to see the data.

McAleenan says it's "not the intent" to hold families for long periods of time, once again falling back on his lack of understanding of the averages for detention.

Not a single family in family detention deported within 45 days had a full asylum hearing on their case. Not one.

Graham ends by calling for Trump to nominate McAleenan, saying "I cannot think of anybody I've ever met who is more capable of doing the job under difficult circumstances."

And that's it! Thank you all for following, and I hope you found it helpful.