Amodei Remarks at FY25 Homeland Security Bill Full Committee Markup (For The Record)

Thank you, Chairman Cole,

Now that you’ve heard our Democratic colleagues tell you that this bill is full of MAGA poison pills and how we cut funding for border security, here are the facts.

This bill prioritizes investments that make the border more secure.

While we do cut border management and Shelter Services grants in our bill, it would be a stretch to call them border security measures. These programs further incentivize illegal immigration at a great cost to the American taxpayer.

We have a profound difference of opinion here – but my Democratic colleagues are out of step with the American people.

Republicans don’t want to continue to fund the status quo – that facilitates more than 2 million encounters every single year.

Last year alone, CBP recorded 3.2 million encounters. To put that in perspective, 3.2 million is more than 11 times the population of Reno, Nevada the largest city in my district, in just one year.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Last year we funded $1.7 billion dollars for tents to process aliens due to this administration’s open border policies.  Guess what – that contract goes to a single vendor – no competition, so we are paying through the nose.

Has spending taxpayer dollars on migrant processing tents to release more aliens into the interior at a rapid pace reduced illegal immigration at all?  No.

And for the Shelter and Services grants, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in places like New York, Chicago, and D.C. to pay for transportation, hotels, and other services for migrants.

Biden’s border crisis has gotten so bad that even mayors of Democrat cities have declared the situation untenable. We can’t afford to spend $650 million dollars on Shelter and Services grants.

Does giving additional services and transportation money to non-profits reduce encounters or deter anyone from crossing illegally? 

Again, the answer according to the three years’ worth of data is a resounding no.

And in the middle of an election year, the Administration just announced a proclamation to quote “shut down” the border if encounters between the ports of entry reach a certain level. We’ve been beyond those levels for a while now.

If the Biden Administration’s policies were so successful – providing billions for border management and the Shelter and Services program you wouldn’t need to shut down the border, right?

The proclamation is an election year gimmick.

And oh, by the way, this Administration gleefully terminated nearly every Trump border-related executive order the minute they took office – should we now be shocked that the border is a disaster?

That is why this bill invests in tried-and-true methods of securing the border that the men and women in the field are asking for – more agents, detention beds, technology, and physical barriers.

This bill makes the following border security investments:

• Sustains funding for 22,000 Border Patrol Agents.
• $300 million for border security technology, a record level of funding.
  •  That includes autonomous surveillance towers; mobile surveillance platforms; counter-tunnel equipment, and a significant investment in counter-drone capability.
• $600 million for border wall because we know physical barriers work.
• And finally, $305 million in non-intrusive inspection equipment and upgrades so we can detect fentanyl at our ports of entry.
  • I’d like to remind everyone in the room that the President’s request asked for exactly zero dollars for inspection equipment to counter the fentanyl that is devastating our communities.

In addition to our efforts at the border, this bill includes funding for critical immigration enforcement efforts such as:

• $3 billion in total to support 50,000 detention beds for ICE, which is 8,500 more beds than were funded in FY2024 and 16,000 more than this Administration requested;
• $822.7 million for flights and ground transportation for ICE to execute its statutory authority to remove more than 1.3 million migrants who are still in this country despite having final orders of removal; and
• $60 million to hire more than 250 new law enforcement officers to investigate transnational criminal activity and help keep our communities safe from those who seek to do us harm.

This bill also makes critical investments outside of the southern border.

In TSA, we provide $178 million dollars to speed up computed tomography screening device efforts at the nation’s airports, nearly double the requested amount, so our traveling public will be safer.

As China continues to grow its military, economic, and political influence in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. must have a persistent presence in the region. This bill expands Coast Guard operations in the Indo-Pacific with additional capacity and capability to include:

• $335 million dollars for 4 Fast Response Cutters to increase deployments in the region;
• $60 million dollars for a service life extension to enable the Coast Guard to deploy another Medium Endurance Cutter; and
• $4.2 million dollars for increased maritime engagements to expand partnerships and exercise the Nation’s bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements in the Indo-Pacific.

Shifting to national security challenges in the Artic, this bill funds the operation of the commercially available icebreaker, whose purchase was included in last year’s bill.  

The U.S. is an arctic nation, and we can’t afford to fall further behind Russia and China. We must continue to invest in our nation’s polar icebreaking capabilities to that end

And finally, my Democratic colleagues say that we don’t make investments in CISA, but the truth is we increase funds for their core mission, by cutting the fluff. The bill includes:

• $861 million dollars for the operation and improvement of cybersecurity defense technology and services for government networks and critical infrastructure partners.
• $834 million dollars for cyber operations, including capacity building and threat hunting.
• And a prohibition on the agency from labeling Americans’ constitutionally protected speech as “misinformation.”

This bill funds the core responsibilities of the Department that protects the Homeland. What it doesn’t do, is fund liberal priorities that further contribute to the chaos at our southern border.

We need to change course on the border – not through gimmicks, but through real policy changes.

This bill is a step in the right direction.

I yield back the balance of my time.