NYC Gazette

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (Ny-13), Ranking Member Of The Legislative Branch Subcommittee, Delivered The Following Remarks At The Appropriations Committee's Markup Of The Fiscal Year 2024 Homeland Security Bill

– As Prepared For Delivery –

Thank you, Madame Chair. Unfortunately, the DHS appropriations bill before this Committee today is a non-starter for immigrant communities like my own district, and I refuse to support it. 

This overtly partisan bill provides $2.1 billion dollars in wasteful spending to build a needless border wall. It also significantly increases funds for ICE removal operations, which break up families, force immigrant communities to live in fear, and do not keep us safer. 

Conversely, this bill slashes desperately-needed funding from programs that actually help immigrant communities. For instance, this bill would decimate funding for USCIS Citizenship & Integration grants, which help immigrants prepare for their citizenship exams.

This bill also eliminates all funding for the newly-created “Shelter and Services” Program, which this body funded with $786 million last fiscal year—to help our cities provide basic humanitarian aid, food, and shelter to asylum seekers who are resettling here in the U.S. 

Eliminating this program’s funding—especially while our nation’s cities are still taking in new asylum seekers—is a non-starter. 

The bill also raises funding for detention, while eliminating the “Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman”—the DHS office that specifically exists to enforce detention standards and to investigate misconduct at our immigration detention facilities. 

And that is all without mentioning the awful anti-women and anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in Section 222 and Sections 223. 

Our immigrant communities make us stronger—and they deserve to be supported by this Committee. By failing to do this, this bill abandons our principles as a nation, and we must do better. I yield.

Original source can be found here.