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	<title> - ACCOUNTABILITY AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S CHILD SEPARATION POLICY</title>
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	[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
	[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]






	ACCOUNTABILITY AND LESSONS LEARNED

	FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S CHILD

	SEPARATION POLICY

	=======================================================================

	HEARING

	BEFORE THE

	COMMITTEE ON
	OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

	ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

	FIRST SESSION

	__________

	FEBRUARY 4, 2021

	__________

	Serial No. 117-1

	__________

	Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform



	[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


	Available on: govinfo.gov,
	oversight.house.gov or
	docs.house.gov



	______


	U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
	43-714 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021


	COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

	CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman

	Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
	Columbia Minority Member
	Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
	Jim Cooper, Tennessee Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
	Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
	Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
	Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
	Ro Khanna, California Michael Cloud, Texas
	Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Bob Gibbs, Ohio
	Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Clay Higgins, Louisiana
	Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Ralph Norman, South Carolina
	Katie Porter, California Pete Sessions, Texas
	Cori Bush, Missouri Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
	Danny K. Davis, Illinois Andy Biggs, Arizona
	Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Andrew Clyde, Georgia
	Peter Welch, Vermont Nancy Mace, South Carolina
	Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Scott Franklin, Florida
	Georgia Jake LaTurner, Kansas
	John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Pat Fallon, Texas
	Jackie Speier, California Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
	Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Byron Donalds, Florida
	Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
	Mark DeSaulnier, California
	Jimmy Gomez, California
	Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
	Vacancy

	David Rapallo, Staff Director
	Russ Anello, Chief Counsel
	Elisa LaNier, Chief Clerk

	Contact Number: 202-225-5051

	Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
	------

	C O N T E N T S

	----------
	Page
	Hearing held on February 4, 2021................................. 1

	Witnesses

	The Honorable Michael E. Horowitz, Inspector General, U.S.
	Department of Justice

	Oral Statement............................................... 6

	Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses
	are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository
	at: docs.house.gov.

	INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

	----------

	* First Focus statement for the record; submitted by Rep.
	Johnson.

	* ``Biden Surge: 3,500 Migrants Caught at Border Daily, `I'm
	Scared at What's Coming','' , The Washington Examiner;
	submitted by Rep. Biggs.

	* ``Biden Administration Prepares to Open an Overflow Facility
	for Migrant Children,'' news, CNN; submitted by Rep. Biggs.

	* ``Eleven Iranians Arrested in Arizona After Jumping U.S.-
	Mexico Border,'' article, The Washington Times; submitted by
	Rep. Biggs.

	* Letter from Rep. Biggs to the Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas,
	the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, dated February 4,
	2021; submitted by Rep. Biggs.

	The documents entered into the record during this hearing are
	available at: docs.house.gov.


	ACCOUNTABILITY AND LESSONS LEARNED

	FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S CHILD

	SEPARATION POLICY

	----------


	Thursday, February 4, 2021

	House of Representatives,
	Committee on Oversight and Reform,
	Washington, D.C.
	The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., via
	Webex, Hon. Carolyn Maloney [chairwoman of the committee]
	presiding.
	Present: Representatives Maloney, Norton, Lynch, Connolly,
	Krishnamoorthi, Khanna, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Porter, Bush,
	Davis, Wasserman Schultz, Welch, Johnson, Sarbanes, Speier,
	Kelly, Lawrence, DeSaulnier, Gomez, Pressley, Comer, Jordan, ,
	Hice, Grothman, Cloud, Foxx, Gibbs, Higgins, Norman, Sessions,
	Keller, Biggs, Franklin, Herrell, and Donalds.
	Chairwoman Maloney. Welcome, everyone, to today's remote
	hearing.
	Pursuant to House rules, members will appear remotely via
	Webex. I know you are all familiar with Webex by now, but let
	me remind everyone of a few points.
	First, you have been using active view for our hybrid
	hearings. This will still work, but grid view will give you a
	better perspective in a remote hearing. If you have any
	questions about this, please contact committee staff.
	Second, we have a timer that should be visible on your
	screen. Members who wish to pin the timers to their screens
	should contact committee staff for assistance.
	Third, the House rules require that we see you. So, please
	have your cameras turned on at all times.
	Fourth, members appearing remotely who are not recognized
	should remain muted to minimize background noise and feedback.
	Fifth, I will recognize members verbally, but members
	retain the, retain the right to seek recognition verbally. In
	regular order members will be recognized in seniority order for
	questions.
	Last, if you want to be recognized outside of regular
	order, you may identify that in several ways. You may use the
	chat function to send a request, you may send an email to the
	majority staff, or you may unmute your mic to seek recognition.
	Obviously, we do not want people talking over each other,
	so my preference is that members use the chat function, like
	email, to facilitate formal verbal recognition.
	Committee staff will ensure that I am made aware of the
	request and I will recognize you.
	We will begin the hearing in just a moment when they tell
	me they are ready to begin the live stream.
	[Pause.]
	Chairwoman Maloney. The committee will come to order.
	Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess
	of the committee at any time. I now recognize myself for an
	opening statement.
	Today's hearing will examine the Trump administration's
	role in one of the darkest chapters in our country's history,
	as the entire world watched in horror while the U.S. Government
	literally ripped children from the arms of their parents.
	The Trump administration's child separation policy was
	intentional, demoralizing, and infuriating all at once. It was,
	in a word, evil. We are still living with the consequences of
	this disastrous policy today.
	As we convene this morning, hundreds of children still have
	not been reunited with their families and thousands more will
	forever carry the trauma of being pulled away from their
	parents with no idea if they would ever see them again.
	Inspector General Horowitz's report on this policy is an
	important contribution to a much-needed reckoning. I would like
	to thank Mr. Horowitz for appearing before the committee today
	and for the work he and his office have done on this
	investigation.
	As you know, Democrats on this committee have been
	demanding accountability for these child separations for years.
	In May 2018, shortly after the Trump administration started
	separating these children, I led a letter with our late
	colleague, Elijah Cummings, to then Chairman Gowdy seeking an
	investigation. He declined.
	In June 2018, then Ranking Member Cummings pleaded with our
	Republican colleagues to stand up to President Trump and stop
	these separations. He was begging for help. Elijah's appeal
	that day to our Nation's better angels was powerful and I would
	like to play some of his words today from that hearing.
	Inspector General Horowitz, you appeared before the
	committee that day so I am sure you will remember this.
	Can the clerk please play Elijah's video?
	[Video shown.]
	Chairwoman Maloney. In the years since Elijah's plea, the
	inhumanity of this policy has only deepened, as the inspector
	general's report makes strikingly clear. The trauma inflicted
	on these children and their families was not an accident. It
	was the point. The Trump administration chose to use these
	children as weapons against their own families.
	Attorney General Sessions and his top political appointees
	pursued their brutal zero tolerance policy, knowing full well
	that it would forcibly separate children from their parents.
	Separating children from their parents was meant to deter
	immigration, no matter how valid their claims of asylum.
	When U.S. Attorneys at the border expressed concern about
	what was being asked of them, Sessions ignored their pleas for
	help. He responded, and I quote, ``We need to take away
	children,'' end quote.
	Let me repeat that. Quote, ``We need to take away
	children,'' end quote. That is what he said. The inspector
	general's findings complement our committee's own
	investigation, which revealed that the Trump administration
	misled the public about their rationale for the policy while
	actively downplaying the harm caused by child separations.
	The IG's report makes clear that Trump administration
	compounded the harm of this policy through incompetence. They
	recklessly disregarded the objections of experts and failed to
	coordinate among agencies to track these children. They ignored
	obvious warnings from an earlier pilot program that experienced
	many of the same problems. It was a disaster from start to
	finish.
	Now we need answers and we need to finally reunite these
	children with their families. On Tuesday, President Biden
	announced a task force to do just that.
	It is astonishing to me that we had to wait for a new
	president to finally take this step. It is long, long overdue
	and we commend President Biden for rejecting the inhumanity of
	continuing to allow these children to live without their
	families.
	You may hear that child separation started not under the
	Trump administration but under the Obama Administration and
	that immigrants were kept in so-called cages long before
	President Trump came into office.
	It is true that during a particularly massive influx of
	refugees from Central America in 2014 temporary facilities were
	used to house migrants for 72 hours as they were processed and
	placed with family members or others.
	But what the Trump administration did was significantly
	worse. It was an intentional policy of separating kids and jail
	everyone for weeks and months before they were deported without
	their children, and it was meant to inflict trauma so that
	others wouldn't come here.
	The message was clear. Don't come here, and if you do,
	don't bring your children because we will take them away from
	you and you may never see them again. Although we can never
	undo what the Trump administration did, we must do everyone in
	our power to ensure that it never happens again.
	We must also heal the wounds, both physical and emotional,
	that the Trump administration inflicted on these children. It
	is the very least we can do, and I intend to pursue that goal
	vigorously.
	Before I close, I want to let everyone know that out of an
	abundance of caution I am currently quarantined after being
	exposed to someone with COVID. So, after the ranking member
	gives his statement, I will be turning the hearing over to Ms.
	Tlaib, who has generously agreed to manage the hearing on my
	behalf.
	I will still participate in the question and answer portion
	of the hearing but Ms. Tlaib will be managing the remainder of
	the hearing.
	So, with that, I now recognize the distinguished ranking
	member, Mr. Comer, for his opening statement.
	Mr. Comer. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, and before I
	begin my opening statement I would be remiss if I didn't,
	again, say publicly that Republicans on the House Oversight
	Committee want to have these committee hearings in person. We
	show up for work.
	We realize that these hearings are more effective, more
	efficient, and a lot more professional when they are held in
	person and, at the very least, we request that you would allow
	these hearings to be conducted like at least a third of the
	committee hearings in Washington and those are being held by
	hybrid where the members have the option of being in person if
	they want, and if they are concerned about COVID then they can
	do it remotely.
	So, again, I want to publicly request that our next hearing
	will be, at the very least, a hybrid hearing.
	Inspector General Horowitz, it is always a pleasure to have
	you before the House Oversight Committee. It is clear from the
	inspector general's review of the Department of Justice's
	implementation of the 2018 zero tolerance policy that there
	were communication breakdowns, failures to fully coordinate
	with the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human
	Services and an overall failure to account for and ensure
	communication between parents being prosecuted for illegal
	entry and their minor children.
	And I believe these implementation failures are part of the
	reason that President Trump ended this zero--this policy more
	than two years ago in June 2018 through an executive order
	reiterating that it was the administration's policy to keep
	families together whenever possible.
	The zero tolerance policy suffered from serious
	implementation flaws that should never be repeated.
	Unfortunately, the humanitarian and national security crisis on
	the southern border has raged on for nearly a decade, starting
	under former President Obama and then Vice President Biden's
	watch.
	Democrats in Congress have refused to close serious
	loopholes in our law that are fueling this crisis. One loophole
	all but guarantees that most parents who bring a minor child
	with them when illegally crossing the border will be released
	into the United States.
	This loophole encourages illegal immigrants to bring a
	child with them to the southern border so they are quickly
	released into the United States. The border crisis reached its
	peak in May 2019 when over 132,000 individuals were apprehended
	by Border Patrol agents just that month.
	The majority of those, 84,000, were part of family units
	including children in tow, and that was only one month. In
	Fiscal Year 2019, the Border Patrol apprehended over 850,000
	individuals illegally crossing the southern border with more
	than half being family units.
	Absent the congressional action needed to end the crisis,
	the Trump administration employed many tools to deter illegal
	entry into the United States and prevent human smugglers from
	exploiting victims for financial gain.
	President Trump implemented the migrant protection
	protocols where inadmissible aliens from Central America were
	returned to Mexico to await immigration court proceedings
	instead of being released into the interior of the United
	States for years.
	President Trump also implemented reforms to the asylum
	system to prevent illegal immigrants from gaming the system and
	filing frivolous applications. All of these reforms produced
	results and contributed to a large decrease in illegal
	migration during the latter month of 2019 into Fiscal Year
	2020.
	In Fiscal Year 2020, those reforms contributed to having
	the illegal immigration on the southern border to 400,000
	apprehensions while family unit apprehensions decreased
	substantially to 52,000, numbers which are still far too high,
	in my opinion.
	But illegal immigration is on the rise again, even as the
	Biden administration cancels these much-needed reforms by
	executive order and guts interior immigration enforcement by
	agency memorandum.
	On his very first day in office, President Biden's
	administration suspended enrollments in the migrant protection
	protocols program, publicly announcing the change.
	The Biden administration also sent a memorandum to
	immigration officials across the department of Homeland
	Security, completely gutting interior enforcement priorities.
	Even many convicted criminal aliens are no longer considered
	priorities for enforcement so long as they were released from
	criminal custody prior to January 20 of 2021.
	That memorandum also ordered a 100-day moratorium on almost
	all deportations of aliens with final orders of removal.
	Fortunately, a Federal judge has already temporarily enjoined
	the administration from carrying out that misguided policy.
	President Biden's first legislative proposal sent to
	Congress would give amnesty to over 11 million illegal aliens
	already living in the United States, some of whom only arrived
	weeks before.
	These illegal immigrants would receive immediate work
	authorization, competing with Americans for jobs at a time when
	we already have 11 million Americans unemployed and searching
	for work.
	Through these actions President Biden has sent the messages
	loud and clear to the world that our immigration laws can be
	violated without consequence. It is no wonder that we now see
	more caravans comprised of thousands of foreign nationals
	organizing to leave their homelands to come illegally to the
	United States.
	These radical far left immigration policies will continue
	to enable the humanitarian crisis at the border, place more
	children in peril as they are brought dangerously to the
	southern border, encourage more illegal immigration, and
	undermine the rule of law.
	I urge the Biden administration to reverse these reckless
	policies and do its job mandated by the Constitution to take
	care that the immigration laws of this country are enforced.
	I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib.
	[Presiding.] Our witness today is Michael Horowitz, who is
	the inspector general for the Department of Justice. The
	witness will be unmuted so we can swear him in.
	Please raise your right hand, Mr. Horowitz.
	Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
	give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
	so help you God?
	[Witness is sworn.]
	Ms. Tlaib. Let the record show that the witness answered in
	the affirmative. Without objection, your written statement will
	be made part of the record.
	With that, Mr. Horowitz, you are now recognized for your
	testimony.

	STATEMENT OF MICHAEL E. HOROWITZ, INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S.
	DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congresswoman.
	Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, members of the
	committee, thank you for inviting me to testify at today's
	hearing. The findings in our zero tolerance report results from
	our view of approximately 10,000 pages of emails, records, and
	handwritten notes, 45 interviews, and, prior to the pandemic,
	Southwest border site visits.
	As noted in the report, we were unable to interview former
	Attorney General Sessions because he had left the department
	shortly after the initiation of our review and the OIG doesn't
	have the ability to compel the testimony of former department
	employees.
	This inability to compel testimony has been a problem in
	many other unrelated OIG reviews and investigations, as this
	committee well knows, and is an issue that this committee has
	previously sought to address on a bipartisan basis.
	I hope the committee will reinitiate those efforts in order
	to promote accountability and transparency in all of our work.
	On April 6, 2018, Attorney General Sessions announced the
	zero tolerance policy for immigration offenses involving
	illegal entry into the United States. The policy required
	Southwest border prosecutors to accept all Department of
	Homeland Security criminal referrals for alleged illegal
	reentry violations, including misdemeanors.
	As we detailed in our report, this announcement was the
	culmination of a year-long effort by DOJ to increase criminal
	immigration enforcement on the Southwest border.
	The following month on May 4 at the urging of Attorney
	General Sessions, the Department of Homeland Security changed
	its policy of not referring family unit adults to DOJ for
	criminal prosecution.
	As described in our report, historically, when DHS
	apprehended adults with children, DHS, with the consent and the
	concurrence of Southwest border U.S. Attorneys, would not refer
	those adults to DOJ for criminal prosecution, largely to avoid
	separating parents from children.
	Instead, DHS would place the family unit in administrative
	deportation proceedings. However, as a result of the zero
	tolerance policy and the change in DHS policy, in May 2018 DHS
	began referring family unit adults to DOJ for criminal
	prosecution, resulting in thousands of child separations.
	Our review found that DOJ leadership failed to effectively
	prepare for or manage the implementation of the zero tolerance
	policy. We concluded that the department's single-minded focus
	on increasing immigration prosecutions through the zero
	tolerance policy came at the expense of careful and appropriate
	consideration of the impact of child separations.
	As we describe in our report, Attorney General Sessions
	understood that prosecution of family unit adults would result
	in children being separated from families, at least
	temporarily, and we determined that DOJ leadership was a
	driving force in DHS's decision to begin referring family unit
	adults for prosecution.
	We, additionally, concluded that DOJ leadership's
	expectations for how the family separation process would work
	significantly underestimated its complexities and demonstrated
	a deficient understanding of the legal requirements related to
	the care and custody of separated children.
	For example, Attorney General Sessions told the Southwest
	border U.S. Attorneys that prosecution of family unit adults
	would be swift and would be followed by immediate unification
	of the separated families.
	However, Federal law requires DHS to place separated
	children in the custody of the Department of Health and Human
	Services within 72 hours. Completing a prosecution within such
	a timeline was, in most cases, a practical and legal
	impossibility as the Southwest border U.S. Attorneys had,
	effectively, reported to DOJ headquarters.
	Yet, we determined that DOJ leadership did not take steps
	after receiving this information and learning about DHS's and
	HHS's difficulties in identifying the location of separated
	children to reconsider their prior assumptions about the
	ability to immediately reunify separated families.
	Additionally, we found that DOJ leadership did not
	effectively plan for or coordinate with the U.S. Attorneys, the
	U.S. Marshals, Health and Human Services, or the Federal courts
	prior to announcing the new policy.
	Indeed, we determined that those key stakeholders were
	provided with little to no advance notice of either the zero
	tolerance policy or the decision to prosecute adult family unit
	members.
	Our report makes three recommendations to the Department of
	the U.S. Marshals Service and they concurred at all three of
	those recommendations.
	Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today and I
	would be pleased to answer any questions that the committee may
	have.
	Ms. Tlaib. Thank you. The chair now recognizes Chairwoman
	Maloney for five minutes for questions.
	[Technical issue.]
	Chairwoman Maloney.--Testimony today.
	Inspector General Horowitz, I would like to start with a
	very simple question. Did AG Jeff Sessions and other top DOJ
	officials know that the zero tolerance policy would separate
	children from their families?
	Mr. Horowitz. Our report found that they did know in
	advance at announcing the child--in advance of announcing the
	zero tolerance policy in April.
	Chairwoman Maloney. Wow. Your report found that AG Sessions
	and his advisors at DOJ were a, quote, ``driving force'' in
	pushing DHS to start separating children at the border by
	referring family members for prosecution.
	What did you mean by the term ``driving force?''
	Mr. Horowitz. So, what we found was, as you indicated, that
	in advance of announcing the zero tolerance policy in April, in
	early April, Attorney General Sessions' expectation was that it
	would lead to the referral of adult members traveling with
	children.
	After the announcement, that didn't immediately occur and
	there were continued meetings, as we detail, in that April to
	May 4 time period when DHS finally announced that he intended
	to make such referrals and that during that time period it was
	Attorney General Sessions' and the department's leadership that
	was pushing the Department of Homeland Security to make that
	change.
	Chairwoman Maloney. Also based on your report it appears
	that Attorney General Sessions and other DOJ officials knew
	exactly what would happen because they had already done it
	before. A 2017 zero tolerance pilot program called El Paso
	Initiative led to the separation of hundreds of children in
	that area.
	Your report says DOJ officials knew in 2018 that the
	government had been unable to reunify children who were
	separated during pilot program. Is that right?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congresswoman, yes. The department had a
	pilot program where two U.S. Attorneys' office with the Border
	Patrol had a pilot program called the El Paso Initiative out of
	Western District of Texas and the district in New Mexico that
	had identified many of the issues that later came to light in
	2018 following the advent of the zero tolerance policy.
	What we found is there was a briefing for the department in
	December 2017. But the takeaway from the department was only
	the positives and no one was asking about the challenges that
	resulted in the U.S. Attorneys' office and DHS stopping that
	policy in 2017.
	Chairwoman Maloney. And yet, Attorney General Sessions
	touted this program as a success in pushing for broader
	separations at a White House meeting in May 2018, correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That was part of the talking points, that is
	correct, explaining that it was a positive effort without being
	aware of or understanding all of the issues that led to its
	secession.
	Chairwoman Maloney. And that was the whole point of the
	zero tolerance policy, to use children as weapons against their
	families. Your report revealed the disturbing May 28 phone call
	between Attorney General Sessions and five U.S. Attorneys.
	The U.S. Attorneys on the call took notes of his comments
	and they wrote, and I quote, ``We need to take away children.
	If you care about kids, don't bring them in. Don't give them
	amnesty. Don't give amnesty to kids, to people with kids,'' end
	quote. Let me repeat, ``We need to take away children.''
	Mr. Horowitz, these notes indicate that Attorney General
	Sessions told these U.S. Attorneys that taking away children
	was necessary to deter their parents from coming to the U.S. Do
	you agree?
	Mr. Horowitz. We found several instances, Chairwoman, where
	references were made to this being an important deterrent
	effort, that being one of them, during the call that Attorney
	General Sessions had with the U.S. Attorneys.
	Chairwoman Maloney. So, your report affirms that these
	child separations were an expected, even desired, outcome of
	the zero tolerance policy. Your testimony today is absolutely
	critical and it is appalling.
	I am truly sorry to the thousands of children and their
	families who continue to suffer because of these purposeful
	acts directed by officials at the highest levels of government.
	So, essentially, children who had done nothing wrong
	themselves were punished, separated from their families, jailed
	and traumatized, as a way to warn other innocent people who had
	not done anything wrong themselves.
	Punishing the innocent to scare the innocent is so un-
	American. The cruelty of this program was not an unintended
	mistake. It was the whole purpose.
	IG Horowitz, I want to thank you for your very important
	testimony and for the critical work that you and your office
	did on this important report.
	I may have gone over so please give Mr. Comer additional
	time. Thank you. I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Gosar, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Gosar. Thank you, Chairwoman. I certainly appreciate
	it.
	I am glad the majority chose the topic of illegal
	immigration for our first substantial hearing. The American
	people deserve to know what is going on at our border. The
	focus is child separation policy during the Trump
	administration and how we need to learn our lesson.
	Great. Let us find out where this policy comes from because
	we haven't gone far enough back in history, and I always like a
	good history lesson.
	The policy of separating children can be traced back to the
	Clinton Administration's settlement of Reno v. Flores. This
	court case dealt with INS's detention and release of
	unaccompanied minors. The court ruled in favor of INS
	separation policies, yet the Clinton Administration decided to
	settle the litigation.
	According to Homeland Security, this settlement allowed the
	agency to detain unaccompanied minors for only 20 days before
	releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services,
	which places the minors in foster or shelter situations until
	they locate a sponsor.
	The problem was worsened in 2016 under Loretta Lynch as AG
	when the liberal Ninth Circuit interpreted the settlement to
	include minors unaccompanied and accompanied by their parents.
	Here we have the separation. Folks, now the floodgates are
	open to separate these children from their parents and Trump
	hadn't even taken office.
	Not to mention the loophole that is already in place of
	catch and release where we give these folks a court date and
	there is nothing forcing them to show up, a loophole that was
	codified in the Refugee Act in 1980, put together by a
	government entirely controlled by Democrats.
	Because of this, Trump instituted a zero tolerance policy
	to ensure we didn't just catch and release these people just to
	be lost in the interior of our country.
	Attorney General Sessions said that the zero tolerance
	policy would be used as a deterrent for potential smugglers and
	illegal immigrants. Wouldn't you agree?
	I have actually visited with parents in Guatemala and El
	Salvador where cartel members have actually confiscated their
	children and the parents were forced to follow.
	Following this policy change, family separation became a
	targeted attack. So, if you want to ask me what I have learned
	from Trump's policy of separation--of separating children, I
	have learned that it didn't start with him and that major
	immigration reform is needed to fix these underlying problems.
	When you don't fix something like catch and release, you
	hurt everyday Americans. I don't know--I don't need to go over
	the same platitudes of why illegal immigration hurts American
	workers because we all know them.
	Not only are American workers affected, but the people
	brought over are experiencing incredible hardships. There are
	countless examples, reports and testimoneys of people that have
	been trafficked over the border for illicit drug or sexual
	purposes, making the policy horrifying and, frankly,
	dehumanizing.
	In addition, we are seeing folks being recycled through the
	process, thanks to our mainstream media. If you have a kid by
	your side of the border, you can't be separated with your adult
	companion and you must be free to seek refuge with that same
	individual.
	DNA testing at the border has raised the scrutiny for being
	inaccurate or, at best, inconclusive. But why is it wrong for
	us to know if these people are even related? Don't we owe it to
	the children to make sure that that is the process?
	If the tests are supposedly inaccurate, we, obviously,
	agree on the premise of finding familial ties. So, let us make
	it a priority to improve that testing.
	The Biden administration has announced that children will
	no longer be separated from their parents at the border. At the
	end of the day, this is window dressing that will be lapped up
	by the adoring media.
	What are these plans to deal with families crossing the
	border now? Will they be detained together? If released, what
	will compel them to show up to their court hearings?
	Will we increase testing for DNA at the border? What about
	COVID? Will these individuals even be tested at the border?
	No offense, Mr. Horowitz. I love seeing you. But you are
	not the individual who needs to be answering these questions if
	we truly have this emergency. That is why I urge the--why I
	bring it to the chairwoman.
	Madam Chairwoman, I challenge you to bring folks from the
	Biden administration before this committee to answer questions
	we would all like to know, because simply halting the
	separation of children at the border is the equivalent of
	putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.
	And with that, I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. I now recognize myself for five minutes for
	questions.
	Inspector General Horowitz, thank you again for being with
	our committee. I would like to focus, as the chairwoman did, on
	the 2017 El Paso Initiative that you discuss in your report.
	From March to November 2017, the U.S. Attorney in the
	Western District of Texas and the Border Patrol office in that
	region conducted an initiative that, contrary to DHS policy at
	the time, directed the prosecution of parents who arrived with
	children.
	So, Inspector General, how was this initiative similar to
	the zero tolerance policy later implemented by DOJ and DHS?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, it was begun, as you indicated, in 2017
	because of discussions that occurred between DHS, Border
	Patrol, and the U.S. Attorneys' offices in western Texas and
	New Mexico about concerns and questions as to whether
	individuals coming with children should be given a complete
	pass for potential criminal prosecutions, the concern being
	that perhaps some individuals were using children to come here
	without--as a means by which to avoid criminal prosecution.
	So, the idea was to set up a discretionary program where
	Border Patrol would consider certain factors, certain
	aggravating factors, and then refer those cases to the U.S.
	Attorneys for consideration.
	Ultimately, that was the program by which the U.S.
	Attorneys didn't accept all of the cases but exercised
	discretion over which ones to take, and subsequent reports
	indicated that somewhere between 15 percent and about a third
	of those cases were accepted for prosecution.
	Ms. Tlaib. And you already testified that the DOJ
	leadership was aware of the existence of the initiative.
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes. Throughout your review, did you uncover any
	evidence that AG Sessions or other DOJ leadership were actually
	concerned about child separation?
	I know you called it, like, agitation or whatever they
	called dehumanizing immoral un-American policies that they
	implemented in this. Did you see any concern in your report by
	the Attorney General's Office and the leadership there about
	the separation?
	Mr. Horowitz. What we found was that they were aware that
	that would be a result of this and our concern, as we detail in
	the report, is that they didn't take the time or undertake the
	opportunity to consult with stakeholders like the U.S.
	Attorneys who handled the El Paso Initiative, like HHS, like
	the courts, or the U.S. Attorneys or the Marshals Service
	themselves, which are department components so that they could
	familiarize themselves with what the issues were likely to be
	despite those being presented in April and May.
	Ms. Tlaib. Inspector General, actually, I know in your
	report that you, in an interview with your office, a senior
	advisor to the attorney general Gene Hamilton actually was
	quoted saying, ``It is going well,'' that the El Paso
	Initiative was going well.
	Now, I don't know about you all here today. Personally, I
	can't imagine describing the taxpayer-funded campaign designed
	to terrorize migrant families as going well.
	As your report notes, the DOJ tore apart about 280 families
	by pursuing this initiative. These cases involved 146 children
	five or younger. Is that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Ms. Tlaib. Including 11 babies who were taken away from the
	only family they have ever known. In Detroit, we call that
	inexcusable cruelty.
	As one official wrote to the acting U.S. Attorney in the
	region at the time, they said, quote, ``We have now heard of
	taking breastfeeding defendant moms away from their infants. I
	did not believe this until I looked at the duty log and saw
	that the fact that we had accepted persecution on moms with
	one-and two-year-olds.''
	I just want my colleagues to just let that sink in for a
	second. The acting U.S. Attorney himself commented that history
	would not judge prosecuting family units kindly. And yet, here
	he went ahead and did it anyway, tearing hundreds of families
	apart in the process.
	Inspector, based on this evidence examined during your
	investigation could you briefly describe Attorney General
	Sessions' and DOJ leadership presented and characterized the El
	Paso Initiative to the other administrative officials?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, in terms of how they characterized it,
	as you indicated in the talking points we saw, it was
	referenced as being a positive outcome, the positive outcome
	being that there were increased prosecutions, resulting in
	metrics that showed decreased border crossings and that that
	was the positive.
	What was--what they failed to be aware of discussed was, as
	you indicated, the problems that were readily apparent once
	that program got underway the DHS and HHS were having trouble
	reunifying parents with their children and that that was
	resulting in court issues, court challenges, and problems that
	ultimately led to actually DHS unilaterally stopping the
	program.
	That information wasn't discussed or, as far as we could
	tell, even briefed at any significant level to department
	leadership.
	Ms. Tlaib. Thank you, Mr. Horowitz.
	I now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that. And
	Mr. Horowitz, always great to see you. Thanks for joining us
	again.
	You know, apart from the comments that have been made by
	the chairwoman earlier to be absolutely outrageous, the reality
	is that if my Democratic colleagues genuinely wanted to improve
	the conditions of these children then they would partner with
	us, quite frankly, to try to fix a broken immigration system,
	to speak out against some of the recent moves by President
	Biden that will only add further chaos at the border and
	further incentivize more illegal immigration from taking place.
	There is a tremendous amount of misinformation and, quite
	frankly, hypocrisy that is surrounding this entire issue.
	For example, the first controversial so-called kids in
	cages policy started under the Obama Administration, not under
	President Trump, and yet, some of my Democratic colleagues
	pulled out pictures of 2014 under the Obama/Biden
	administration of kids in cages and tried to attach that to
	President Trump.
	That is an outrage. It is an absolute hypocrisy underway.
	It was President Obama's DACA program that sparked the surge of
	illegal immigration at our southern border. The pictures of
	children in these cages, literally, they were being warehoused
	and that was taking place under the Obama Administration.
	And in the surges the chairwoman acknowledges was taking
	place a number of family units--of course, we are talking about
	adult aliens who were traveling with children, they were
	apprehended at the border.
	In fact, those numbers skyrocketed under the Obama
	Administration. People saw these family units were being
	released into the interior of our country with catch and
	release.
	How do you stop illegal immigration when you release them
	into our borders? That was taking place under the Obama
	Administration and that led to child recycling rings which,
	personally, I have seen on some of my visits to the southern
	border where these children are used multiple times to escort
	adults illegally into our country and then, of course, they
	were released.
	In fact, in 2019, DHS identified some 4,800 fraudulent
	families. Under President Trump in June 2018, through executive
	order Trump tried to keep these families together while the
	immigration litigation process was unfolding.
	But, unfortunately, now, under the Biden administration, we
	are only watching the problem exacerbated as broken illegal
	immigration system that we have is being exposed.
	We are now watching under Biden his policies are going to
	weaken our border security. It will weaken our interior
	enforcement while at the same time incentivizing more people to
	come here illegally.
	And, as already been mentioned, he is proposing 11 million
	people who are here illegally to receive amnesty without
	closing any loopholes, by the way. This is just an outrage.
	Just this week--just this week, the Biden administration is
	opening an HHS overflow facility for unaccompanied children on
	the U.S.-Mexico border.
	In 2019, this very same facility that is reopening, in 2019
	one of my colleagues on this committee referred to that same
	facility as a concentration camp.
	I mean, that is just an absolute outrage. So, are we, now
	that Biden is going to use this same facility for the same type
	of children, is this now the proper terminology, first, to
	refer to this as the Biden concentration camps?
	I have not heard a word of Democrats referring to it as
	concentration camps anymore. In fact, we have another caravan,
	as we all know, headed to our border right now from Honduras
	with thousands of people, and this whole thing is just an
	outrage to me.
	Mr. Horowitz, I don't have much time left. Let me just ask
	you, with those who are coming to the country legally, went
	through the legal process, were any children separated from
	their parents in that legal process?
	Mr. Horowitz. Not that I know of, although I would have to
	check to see how much we looked into that.
	Mr. Hice. There was just argument about children being
	separated was a deterrent not to legal immigration but to
	illegal immigration, and separating the children was part of
	people--of stopping them from coming here illegally. Is that
	correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct. It was intended to be a
	deterrent on illegal immigration.
	Mr. Hice. Thank you. I see my time has expired. I yield
	back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from District of Columbia, Ms.
	Norton, is recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Norton. I thank you.
	Inspector General Horowitz, first, let me understand what
	this shorthand means, this zero tolerance policy from the
	administration--from the Trump administration. That was to
	prosecute all cases of illegal entry including those seeking
	asylum and including separation of parents from children. Is
	that what we mean by zero tolerance policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. As envisioned and implemented by Attorney
	General Sessions and his policy, that was the intention.
	Ms. Norton. So, let us understand what we were talking
	about, and let me be the first to admit that every
	administration has had problems with people coming illegally
	into this country and we still have that problem, and it is
	incumbent upon us to make sure that people don't just flow into
	the country.
	So, this has been and continues to be a problem for
	Democratic and Republican administrations. The question becomes
	how do you handle it.
	So, the fallout from this zero tolerance policy, certainly,
	didn't come as any surprise. As I understand it, officials from
	DHS and DOJ, Department of Justice, had been discussing this
	policy at least in 2017. That is about a year before it was
	announced.
	Now, Inspector General Horowitz, your report found that the
	Department of Justice leadership failed to coordinate, and I am
	trying to understand what that means, with other agencies
	before they launched the policy.
	So, could you explain your finding of the issues caused by
	the lack of coordination, coordination with what agencies? What
	should have been done?
	Mr. Horowitz. Certainly, Congresswoman.
	So, we found issues with--internally within the department
	with two primary components, the Southwest border U.S.
	Attorneys and the Marshals Service, both of which bore the
	brunt of handling the additional prosecutions that came with
	the zero tolerance policy as well as the child separation.
	The U.S. Attorneys had to figure out how to handle the
	substantial increase in caseload while handling all of their
	other cases. The Marshals Service had to figure out how to
	house these new defendants and how to manage them safely.
	Externally, the Justice Department should have and needed
	to coordinate better with, for example, HHS. It was dealing
	with Homeland--with Department of Homeland Security, as we
	detail, but it was going to fall on the Department of HHS,
	Health and Human Services, to deal with the separated children.
	And what we found is that even as the DOJ was interacting
	with HHS on a variety of issues, it didn't interact with them
	or discuss with them the plans for the child separation.
	DHS learned about this when I was announced.
	Ms. Norton. Yes, that is important. I just want to,
	finally, talk about the--what you say about the children
	because both sides are concerned about that.
	According to your report, the officials at the Department
	of Justice demonstrated what you call a deficient understanding
	of the legal requirements related to the care and custody of
	separated children.
	So, I would like to know what were the legal requirements
	that you are referring to and what could a better understanding
	of those requirements have done to change what happened to
	these children?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, the legal issue here is the requirement,
	first, under the Flores settlement and then under statutory
	provisions that implemented some of those settlement provisions
	that require DHS to transfer unaccompanied children to HHS, to
	Health and Human Services, within 72 hours.
	As we detail in the report, Attorney General Sessions
	indicated in his comments that he believed prosecutions could
	happen almost instantaneously, certainly, within the 72 hours,
	and we have comments from other senior officials indicating a
	similar belief.
	That belief, as we detail here, was not only legal--a legal
	impossibility in most cases but also a practical one. Indeed,
	when the U.S. Attorneys found out that child separations would
	occur, they informed the department that they could not
	undertake most of these cases within the 72 hours. So, the
	assumption, belief, that this could be done in a day or within
	72 hours was mistaken and reflected an absence of understanding
	of the law.
	Had that been known or had they asked in advance, Attorney
	General Sessions or others, they would have learned about those
	problems prior to implementation.
	Ms. Norton. Thank you, Inspector Horowitz. Thank you very
	much for your report. It is very helpful.
	And I know my time has expired.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Grothman. Can you hear me?
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes.
	Mr. Grothman. OK. Good.
	Thank you for being here. I will emphasize, again, what my
	ranking members says. I wish we could all see you in person
	and, hopefully, we can do that soon.
	The border concerns me a great deal. I know it is a very
	hazardous border right now. I was down there last week, and I
	think they told us in the Tucson sector alone there were a
	hundred people who dehydrated to death. So, a very dangerous
	situation last year.
	Do we know how many children have crossed the border, say,
	in the last year compared to three or four years ago?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, I don't have the data on, you
	know, recent crossings. We could enquire at DHS, which would be
	the keeper of that data.
	Mr. Grothman. Yes, I thought that--I thought you might just
	have it. As I understand it, the total number of people
	crossing the border has dropped from, like, 100,000 to 10,000
	per month in that time.
	Do you know what percentage or how many, say, in an average
	month how many children wind up being processed at the border?
	Mr. Horowitz. Unfortunately, Congressman, I don't have any
	of those current numbers or even the month to month
	fluctuations. I know we saw in this review how the numbers
	fluctuated and how the department was tracking them. But I
	would have to ask DHS for those--for that data.
	Mr. Grothman. OK. I will give you another question. Do you
	know how common it is--maybe this is another thing for those
	guys--how common it is for girls to be molested on the trip
	crossing the border?
	Mr. Horowitz. Yes. Again, Congressman, that would be
	something that we could inquire and, certainly, be able to
	verify that.
	Mr. Grothman. Yes. Well, OK, once we have them here, do we
	know how often the children are here with both parents and/or
	one parent?
	Mr. Horowitz. I don't know the answer to that question on
	the numbers for one versus two.
	Mr. Grothman. OK. I will tell you why I think it is so
	relevant. As I understand the problem we have at the border is
	that sometimes a child may come with one parent and the other
	parent may, say, still be back in Central America, and at least
	we are allowed to believe that some Central American countries
	don't like that.
	Has there been any effort ever made if a child shows up
	with one parent and not another parent what the judicial system
	in the Central American countries think of that?
	Mr. Horowitz. I am not aware of our--of people being
	aware--understanding of what the foreign government might think
	of that. Again, we could certainly followup to see if DHS or
	the department has that kind of information.
	Mr. Grothman. At least I have been told and, of course, I
	just get this talking to the Border Patrol folks, that, well,
	we would not like it if, say, one parent took a child and went
	from the United States to Nicaragua, right, because
	frequently--I mean, right?
	Mr. Horowitz. In fact, there are laws on that but----
	Mr. Grothman. There are laws on that, and at least I have
	been told that going the other way the Central American
	countries don't like us getting in--I mean, they don't like it
	if one parent in Central America comes across here.
	Do you know how many unaccompanied--well, how many minors
	does the--does our judicial system deal with every year? Do we
	have that?
	Mr. Horowitz. You know, that we could, certainly, find from
	the department's immigration office, the judicial office here.
	I don't know. It does fluctuate. Obviously, here there were
	thousands in the various--in the short time period at issue.
	So----
	Mr. Grothman. The judicial system, I guess--do you get
	involved at least a little bit in every minor who comes here,
	or no?
	Mr. Horowitz. We did not get involved in every single case
	but primarily because, as you know, DHS has first tier
	responsibility here and it would only come to the department if
	there is a referral and it ends up in the criminal courts or
	executive office for immigration.
	Mr. Grothman. Total, how many minors did you deal with,
	say, in the last year, that you wind up getting involved with
	because a referral is made?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, we found here in that just six-week
	period or so there were at least 3,000 children separated
	through referrals. So, we were looking at, you know, just that
	six-week period or so, and that number we got from the DHS
	reports.
	Mr. Grothman. OK.
	Mr. Horowitz. So, I can't vouch for those myself. I can
	only tell you we relied derivatively on that.
	Mr. Grothman. Yes. Can you tell me one more time when those
	six weeks were?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, it would have been, roughly, from the May
	4 announcement----
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Horowitz. So, it would have been, roughly, from the May
	4 time period to June 20 when President Trump issued the
	executive order that, largely, ceased the referrals.
	Mr. Grothman. OK. Thank you.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Lynch. Good morning, Madam Chair. I appreciate your
	courtesy.
	Mr. Connolly. Could I--could I interrupt? Could I interrupt
	the--is the chair not--oh, excuse me. I am sorry. Go ahead,
	Steve. Forgive me for interrupting.
	Mr. Lynch. That is OK. That is OK.
	Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I am in three hearings right
	now so I am going to have to jump off after I get my answer.
	But so members of this committee had an opportunity to
	participate in CODEL Escobar. We were actually--we went to the
	El Paso/Juarez border crossing.
	We had an opportunity to meet with a lot of families. This
	was just when the MPP program, which is the return to Mexico
	policy, was implemented.
	Mr. Horowitz, I want to thank you for your wonderful work.
	You are a frequent flyer to our committee and I consider you a
	partner in oversight, and I had an opportunity to read your
	report.
	According to your report, one of the factors, and Ms.
	Holmes Norton actually hit on this a little bit, one of the
	factors that you described that exacerbated this separation
	problem and continues to be a problem because of the failure of
	reunification efforts was the disconnect between the U.S.
	Marshals Service, you know, and prosecution on that side
	versus, you know, under Flores, as you noted, HHS has the
	responsibility for the care and custody of these kids after 72
	hours.
	So, they are on--first of all, they weren't communicating
	but they are also on different timelines. Is that--isn't that
	correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct, and, in fact, as we noted,
	you couldn't expect HHS--I am sorry, the Marshals Service, to
	prepare in advance with HHS when you didn't tell the Marshals
	Service any of this was going to happen.
	Mr. Lynch. Yes, this sort of landed in their lap, you know,
	unexpectedly and unannounced, and so they were scrambling to
	try to deal with this.
	You know, I am just curious. It is disappointing that you
	don't have access to Attorney General--former Attorney General
	Sessions, and maybe we got to look at that whole process as
	well so that you can do these, you know, deeper investigations
	and have cooperation from all of the witnesses.
	But that assumption that they were going to be able to do a
	parallel track, OK, so they could--they could, you know,
	prosecute, apparently, the parents under criminal statute
	within 72 hours so that their kids, who were going to be put in
	HHS custody within 72 hours so that that separation would not
	occur.
	You know, as absurd as that sounds to me, it would be
	helpful if you gave your opinion. Was that willful ignorance? I
	mean, knowing the mechanics of both processes, it seems to me
	that there is no way someone could realistically assume that
	that was going to happen. I mean, that is just fantasy, in my
	opinion.
	But you had a chance to look at it more closely and I would
	like to hear your thoughts on that.
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, we found it was a practical and
	legal impossibility in almost all circumstances, and had there
	been, frankly, minimal due diligence by talking to the U.S.
	Attorneys themselves, the Marshals Service, DHS, HHS, the
	judges, the courts who were not consulted in advance, that
	would have been readily understood.
	But I would like to say also as a former AUSA prosecutor
	myself, I am a little out of date. I was a prosecutor in the
	1990's. But the notion that you could expect to put someone in
	the Marshals Service custody, get them in front of--identify
	who they really are, right.
	You have got a person coming across the border. The whole
	purpose of this is to make sure that before you prosecute
	someone for a misdemeanor violation that they aren't, for
	example, a drug dealer or a--some other serious violator of the
	law that would result in a felony and a much more serious
	felony, right.
	So, the Marshals Service needs time, some time, to figure
	out who this person is, if they really are who they say they
	are. Then you have got to get them to a prosecutor. The
	prosecutor has to write a complaint, get them to the court.
	You got to get a judge. The judge has to take not only a
	guilty plea but then has to sentence the defendant, and that
	assumes the defendant is willing to plead guilty. That
	assumption would be faulty. Not everybody shows up and says, I
	am pleading guilty right away. They get a defense lawyer.
	As we noted, the courts are where it had a problem. They
	needed to find defense lawyers for all these new defendants,
	right. So, you need to get a defense lawyer lined up.
	There is all sorts of things that had to happen, and the
	notion that all of that could happen in the majority of these
	cases, let alone many, in 72 hours, as we found we thought was
	a practical and legal impossibility.
	Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair, for your indulgence.
	Thank you so much.
	Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. Keep up the good work.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congressman.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chairwoman. I appreciate the topic on
	what is an extremely important topic: our national security at
	the border, the humanitarian crisis that has been ongoing for
	many years.
	We, in Texas, experience this maybe in a way that much of
	the Nation doesn't. While it does affect the entire nation, we
	feel the impact in our communities very--early on and in a way
	that is sometimes dramatic.
	I get texts and messages all the time from people
	throughout the district. Our sheriffs meet on a weekly basis to
	discuss how the communities even hours away from the border,
	are affected each week in their communities by the cartel
	activity that goes on along the border.
	And I do think it is important to put this whole discussion
	in a context because there is a notion that what we see at the
	border, in a sense, is an organic movement which includes
	families coming to the border to seek a better life and,
	certainly, no doubt, when you are talking about thousands there
	is an element of it.
	But the real broader picture and more correct picture is
	that this is a cartel-driven mechanism, that the caravans we
	are seeing coming to the border are, indeed, recruited by the
	cartels.
	The cartels charge for anyone who comes through the border.
	They profit from it, and our assets at the border, both in
	dealing and helping with children but also in protecting and
	securing our border, find themselves outmatched when it comes
	to assets, oftentimes when it comes to manpower, when it comes
	to financing, to deal with the cartel activities who have more
	assets, more funding, oftentimes to deal with this.
	And what is heartbreaking is that, of course, the cartels
	have no regard for human life at all, and so they not only
	charge the migrants who are coming from a financial
	perspective, but I have seen the videos where migrants have
	been, after going through the process, after paying, coming
	here are put in stash houses. I have seen where they have been
	stripped and beaten, and those videos sent to their families
	demanding more money be sent to them.
	And it is heartbreaking what happens. There is a report
	from Doctors Without Borders, and according to the report it
	said more than two-thirds of those making the journey north
	become victims of violence along the way and nearly one-third
	of the women are sexually assaulted along the journey.
	Ronald Vitiello, the former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol
	and former acting director of the Immigration and Customs
	Enforcement, told this committee in July 2019--he said there is
	a significant percentage of families who are pretending to be
	related when they are, in fact, not.
	So, this is a big problem. The word is out. People know
	that if they send or bring a child that their end result is to
	be released into the United States.
	Indeed, there was an investigation by the Homeland Security
	along with the Border Patrol that began a family fraud
	initiative in El Paso and they put out a report that outlined
	fraudulent families, false documents being presented, and the
	bottom line was that the investigations indicate that
	transnational cartels and individuals have entered into schemes
	with biological parents to dangerously transfer their children
	ranging in age from four months to 16 years to unrelated adults
	so they can pose as family units to further their human
	smuggling criminal enterprises and to fraudulently obtain U.S.
	immigration benefits.
	And so what happens is someone shows up at the border with
	a child claiming to be theirs and we have no idea if they
	really are. It is semi-humorous except for the context of what
	we are talking about. One family, when I was on a border visit,
	had showed up and they had presented themselves as someone who
	crossed the border for the first time and the child being their
	child.
	And the child needed to go to the restroom and so the agent
	said, well, would you like me to show you where the restroom
	is. First time in the facility, supposedly. The child is, like,
	oh, I know where the restroom is already. The child had been
	there multiple times and had been part of their rent-a-kid
	program that the cartels had incorporated to send that child
	through with an unaffiliated unfamilied adult.
	I have been to a facility just outside my district that has
	200 young ladies who have been through the border and have been
	a part of this scheme, and it was heartbreaking to talk to the
	agents who said that a substantial part, if not the majority of
	them, had been abused along the journey.
	And so the question remains for us what kind of policies--
	--
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Cloud. My apologies.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you,
	General Horowitz, for always speaking truth to power and doing
	it without equivocation or manipulation. You are a model of
	what an independent IG is supposed to be and do. Thank you.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congressman.
	Mr. Connolly. And let me also say we have heard the word
	outrage and hypocrisy from colleagues on the other side of the
	aisle. I guess I want to demur.
	I want to reserve my outrage for the fact that the United
	States of America found itself putting children in cages and
	deliberately using children as pawns to separate them from
	their families for an ideological commitment to a rigid
	immigration policy that was inhumane. That is where my outrage
	is, and I think that is where yours ought to be, too.
	Mr. Horowitz, I want to focus on a December 2017 memo
	discussed in your report titled ``Policy Options to Respond to
	Border Surge of Illegal Immigrants'' or ``Immigration,'' excuse
	me.
	It was prepared by DHS and provided to Gene Hamilton, a top
	aide to then Jeff Sessions, attorney general of the United
	States. It discussed multiple immigration policy options using
	unclear language including, quote, ``increase prosecution of
	family unit parents and separate family units.''
	Were these both, essentially, child separation policies,
	Mr. Horowitz?
	Mr. Horowitz. In practice, they would have been, yes.
	Mr. Connolly. And is that--was that just no different than
	previous administration policies with respect to children?
	Mr. Horowitz. What we found was that, historically, DHS,
	with the concurrence of the department's U.S. Attorneys on the
	Southwest border did not transfer adults for criminal
	prosecution--instead, using administrative deportation
	proceedings.
	There were some exceptions. There is a GAO report that
	identified a .3 percent figure in I think it was 2016. But,
	generally speaking, that was--the policy was to not send
	adult----
	Mr. Connolly. So, in other words, this was quite a change
	from previous standing policy and practice?
	Mr. Horowitz. At least since 1992 we saw that that was the
	case.
	Mr. Connolly. I think that is really important because some
	would have us believe that this is no different than previous
	policy, and your own report finds quite the opposite. It was a
	drastic change in previous policy and deliberate.
	According to your findings, did DHS thoroughly vet the
	policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. DHS, apparently, did not. We--both through
	our work at DOJ and looking at the DHS OIG report, they
	identified serious problems with how DHS coordinated with the
	Health and Human Services agency.
	Mr. Connolly. And, nonetheless, they went forward with the
	policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Mr. Connolly. Hmm. According to your report, the memo was
	sent by the then DHS chief of staff to Gene Hamilton. We have
	already mentioned the key aide to Attorney General Jeff
	Sessions at that time. But you didn't name the individual in
	your report. Is that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Mr. Connolly. All right. But I was curious and I looked
	into who was that DHS chief of staff at the time. Well, and lo
	and behold, it was none other than Chad Wolf, the same Chad
	Wolf who held himself out as the acting secretary of DHS, even
	though GAO and multiple courts found that he was actually
	acting illegally because he had not been confirmed for that
	position.
	He also has quite a checkered history in terms of ending
	the DACA program protecting Dreamers, suspending New Yorkers'
	ability to enroll in Trusted Travelers programs, and diverting
	dollars, millions of dollars, of taxpayer dollars on President
	Trump's famous border wall.
	And, of course, he was a key architect in the policy we are
	describing, putting children at risk and using them as pawns in
	trying to enforce his views about immigration and who should or
	should not come across the border.
	It is a shameful episode in American history. It,
	certainly, is not something that made Americans proud and it is
	certainly not something that won us admiration overseas with
	friend and foe alike.
	I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from North Carolina, Ms. Foxx,
	is recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
	Thank you, Mr. Horowitz, for being with us. In your
	testimony, you mentioned that the Department of Justice failed
	to effectively prepare for or manage the implementation of the
	zero tolerance policy. Is that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Ms. Foxx. You also noted that the department's single-
	minded focus on increasing immigration prosecutions during the
	zero tolerance policy came at the expense of careful and
	appropriate consideration of the impact of child separations.
	How could the department have been better prepared for the
	implementation of this policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, I think, first and foremost, they
	should have consulted with their own components at, namely,
	their U.S. Attorneys on the Southwest border, their marshals on
	the Southwest border, as well as their counterparts at Health
	and Human Services and DHS to make sure there was an ability to
	reunite children after they were separated and the impact on
	the Marshals Service, the prosecutors, and the courts on the
	substantial influx of cases that would be coming as a result of
	these prosecutions?
	Ms. Foxx. OK. I was going to followup with what would
	prevent the same challenges. I am assuming you are saying
	coordination is the way to go with the local people?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct. It seems obvious, I think,
	to everybody. But it just didn't happen here. In fact, as we
	know here, HHS said they learned about the policy from media
	reports.
	Ms. Foxx. OK. So, your report made three recommendations to
	the Department of Justice. Can you please outline those
	recommendations?
	Mr. Horowitz. Yes. So, we--the initial recommendation to
	the department was before undertaking a significant policy
	change such as this that it should consult with its components
	and make sure it has--and other executive branches of agencies
	and make sure it has those policies in place.
	Again, that seems obvious. But as you know from some of the
	prior hearings here on other matters sometimes we make those
	obvious recommendations because, in fact, we find that problems
	arose. So, that is one recommendation.
	The second is to the Marshals Service to create internal
	policies that would better prepare the Marshals Service for
	interacting with HHS with regard to children and adults that
	are separated because we found here, when the Marshals Service
	learned of this new policy it actually didn't have any of its
	own policies in place for how to deal with HHS.
	And then the third recommendation is for the marshals to
	interact with HHS to come up with an MOU or other understanding
	so that, again, if there are separations that occur that adult
	defendants in Marshals Service custody can communicate with
	children that are in HHS custody.
	Ms. Foxx. Well, would you--I think, again, you have
	described some of the ways in which you expect the Department
	of Justice to work in the future to coordinate with the
	affected stakeholders.
	I don't know what reaction you have gotten from the
	department, but do you expect that those things to happen that
	you have recommended?
	Mr. Horowitz. We did, and we got full cooperation from the
	administration--the outgoing administration Acting Attorney
	General Rosen, who was deputy attorney general at the time.
	They concurred in all three recommendations and agreed with our
	findings.
	Ms. Foxx. Thank you. Are there any particular policies
	affecting multiple components or executive agencies that you
	are aware of in which this recommendation will be a key to a
	policy success or failure?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, I think, most importantly, it is the
	interactions with the U.S. Attorneys and the executive office
	of the U.S. Attorneys, as we found here.
	There were multiple occasions where they actually did
	highlight concerns in advance of implementation, briefly in
	advance of implementation, within days, and those weren't
	considered.
	And I think a more robust process--in fact, as we say in
	here, that is what we were told after the fact, the recognition
	by former Deputy AG Rosenstein and others that that in fact
	should have occurred, seeing now on paper what had happened.
	Ms. Foxx. Right. Thank you very much, Mr. Horowitz.
	And Madam Chair, I yield back.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congresswoman.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from California, Mr. Khanna, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	[No response.]
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Johnson. I am sorry. Did the gentlelady say Congressman
	Johnson?
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes, Mr. Johnson. You are now recognized for
	five minutes.
	Mr. Johnson. All right. Let me pull up my screen. Bear with
	me. All right.
	All right. Thank you. I want to thank the chairwoman for
	holding this hearing today and I want to thank Inspector
	Horowitz for testifying.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you.
	Mr. Johnson. And I would like to begin by saying that I
	visited detained immigrants at more than one of the private
	for-profit detention centers set up by the Trump administration
	to profit from the prolonged misery inflicted by Jeff Sessions,
	Rod Rosenstein, John Kelly, and others who sought to discourage
	asylum seekers and others from seeking entry into our country
	at the southern border by implementing a cruel and barbaric
	policy requiring that children, even infants, be ripped from
	the arms of their parents and placed in private for-profit
	detention facilities, sometimes literally in cages.
	The first step toward creating a system that prioritizes
	human dignity is figuring out what went wrong, and I am looking
	forward to doing that that today.
	Inspector Horowitz, your review found that Attorney General
	Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, and others
	intended that their zero tolerance policy would cause children,
	including babies, to be separated from their families. Isn't
	that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That was, certainly, the understanding when
	they announced--when Attorney General Sessions announced the
	zero tolerance policy that was his understanding.
	Mr. Johnson. And your report documented that the purpose of
	this abusive child separation policy was to deter asylum
	seekers and others from seeking entry into the United States at
	the southern border. Isn't that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. We found, in talking points and other
	records, that that was part of the reason for doing it was as a
	deterrent effect.
	Mr. Johnson. And your report found that the Trump
	administration moved forward on its child separation policy
	without the sort of planning and coordination required to
	humanely and properly care for the thousands of children,
	including infants, who were snatched away from their parents.
	Isn't that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Mr. Johnson. And, Inspector Horowitz, your report also
	concluded that the Trump administration moved forward on its
	child separation policy without the sort of planning and
	coordination required that would have enabled the Trump
	administration to reunite the thousands of infants and children
	who had been taken away from their parents with their parents.
	Isn't that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. They, certainly, didn't take the steps that
	could have helped them try and do that. What they could have,
	ultimately, done remained to be seen. But you are correct,
	Congressman.
	Mr. Johnson. Thank you. And, Inspector Horowitz, isn't it a
	fact that as of today literally hundreds of children taken away
	from their parents under the Trump administration child
	separation policy remains separated from their parents today?
	Is that true?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is my understanding from court filings
	and ongoing litigation, Congressman.
	Mr. Johnson. Unfortunately, the stain of this inhumane
	Trump administration child separation policy will remain etched
	on the forehead of America for posterity, and I am gratified
	that the Biden administration is taking steps to put an end to
	this sordid chapter in the Nation's history and Congress should
	work to do the same.
	Madam Chair, I also ask unanimous consent to enter into the
	record a statement from the organization First Focus on
	Children containing recommendations on how to ensure we never
	repeat what happened with the zero tolerance policy, including
	adopting a best interest of the child standard for all
	immigration decisions.
	Ms. Tlaib. Without objection.
	Mr. Johnson. Thank you, and with my remaining time, I would
	like to turn, briefly, to the section of your report that
	details how the zero tolerance policy burdened an already
	strained Federal court system, resulting in less judicial
	oversight and more chaos at the border.
	One striking detail from your report is that Federal judges
	in the Southern District of Texas, quote, ``begged,'' end
	quote, the U.S. Attorney and the then deputy assistant attorney
	general to bring their concerns about family separations to
	Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.
	That is how bad it got, Federal judges begging the DOJ for
	help. Your report also noted that Deputy Attorney General
	Rosenstein participated in a few meetings organized by the
	Administrative Office of the Courts to address the impact of
	the child separation policy on the administration of justice.
	To your knowledge, did those meetings lead to any changes
	in how DOJ handled family separations?
	Mr. Horowitz. It did not result, as far as we found, in any
	changes. The change occurred on June 20 when the executive
	order was issued that, essentially, largely, ended the
	separations and a week later a court ruling that, effectively,
	did the same.
	Mr. Johnson. Thank you. And aside from what you mentioned
	in the report----
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Johnson. Thank you. I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Gibbs, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, Madame Chair.
	First of all, I would like to say as a parent and a
	grandparent, anytime children are separated from their parents
	it is just heart wrenching, and this has, you know, been an
	issue past--previous administrations on the kids in cages and
	all that, and I want to associate myself with the remarks from
	Representative Cloud and Hice, both their remarks.
	But I was just down at the border last week and, you know,
	I think we have seen the border crossings drop. The illegal
	entries have dropped. We have got a better relationship with
	Mexico now.
	They have got, I guess, about 25,000 of their own troops on
	our southern border on their side that help, and one of the
	Customs agents there down on the border told us that in the
	last year or so that has really turned around, the
	relationship--the working relationship with Mexico.
	So, that is all good things that came out of the Trump
	administration and--seeing it drop.
	Now, my fear is what we ought to be doing, Madam Chair, is
	we ought to be calling in Biden administration officials to
	find out what they are going to do here on the border because
	when I was down there they stopped construction of the 30-foot
	wall and when you talk to border agents, you talk to ranchers,
	you talk to everybody, a stakeholder down there, they all say
	they need the fence.
	I like to call it a fence because it is really a fence
	because it has holes in it. It is not a wall. The 30-foot fence
	and with the technologies to go along with that, and that is
	what we ought to really be addressing because if we don't, we
	know there is a caravan coming up from Honduras right now and
	that we will see more issues with children being exploited by
	the cartels and all the other illegal criminal activity that
	goes on there, a humanitarian crisis that is going on at the
	border.
	We witnessed that. People, sex trade, the human trafficking
	trade, the drug trade, and that is the issue we ought to be
	addressing with the Biden administration to find out what their
	thoughts are and when are they going to start reconstruction,
	reimplementing the construction of the fence.
	And I also want to note that the new 30-foot fence, it
	saves taxpayers money because on border agent can patrol two
	linear miles of fence, and compared where there is no fence it
	takes three to five border agents to control one mile of border
	with no--with 50 percent less apprehension of drugs and illegal
	activity.
	So, this is common sense. I encourage all our members,
	especially on the other side of the aisle, go down there. Talk
	to the border agents. Find out what they are saying and what is
	happening down there. Talk to landowners and see what is going
	on.
	Because if we don't complete what we started here a few
	years ago--and we have seen results, the fence is working--we
	are going to see more and more incentives for the migrants to
	come up here looking for a better life and more and more of
	these issues that we are discussing today, and that is what we
	really need to address.
	And so I encourage, Madam Chair, to encourage members to go
	down to the border, talk to the border agents, talk to the
	stakeholders, and also we should bring in Biden administration
	officials and find out why they paused the construction of the
	fence that we know that works.
	And also when I was down there I saw a fence right next
	to--a new fence, and it was the same structure but it was 18
	feet, 12 feet shorter, and they--the border agents told me that
	was the Obama fence.
	And so, apparently, President Obama and then Vice President
	Biden at the time were for a fence before. Now they are against
	the fence. So -- but the fence works. The technology works.
	Let us help our border agents patrol it and let us stop the
	human trafficking crisis at the border, the drug trafficking,
	and so, you know, that would, obviously, stop at least with the
	topic of the day with child separation at the border and let us
	help these countries down there to improve their economies and
	disincentivize these people that want to come to the United
	States.
	On that fact, I will yield back, Madam Chair. But let us--
	we ought to have hearings on what we are going to do at the
	border to stop the problem overall.
	Thank you.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from California, Mr. Khanna, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Thank you, Inspector General, for your work. I would like
	to ask you about the DOJ's failure to form a zero tolerance
	policy with any of the U.S. Marshals Service.
	If you could just explain, very briefly, what the zero
	tolerance policy was and how broad--what it was.
	Mr. Horowitz. So, the zero tolerance policies announced in
	April 2018 required U.S. Attorneys along the Southwest border
	to prosecute all illegal entry cases or attempted illegal entry
	cases referred to them by the Department of Homeland Security,
	even if they were misdemeanor violations.
	So, the intent was to prosecute every single case,
	misdemeanor or felony.
	Mr. Khanna. Give us an example of things, misdemeanors that
	were prosecuted? I mean, things that we had never done this
	before, right, in our country's history but what are examples
	of misdemeanors that started to get prosecuted?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, the difference between the misdemeanor
	and the felony, it is a misdemeanor to seek to cross the border
	illegally or to actually cross the border illegally in the
	absence of any abrogating factors such as if you don't have a
	prior felony or prior conviction, if you are not carrying drugs
	or guns or other paraphernalia.
	If you are simply crossing the border illegally, without
	any of those other overlays, that is a misdemeanor.
	Traditionally, those cases were handled through the
	administrative deportation process, not the criminal process.
	There were exceptions.
	There were occasions through certain efforts to seek to do
	those over the years. But those were the exceptions rather than
	the norm.
	Mr. Khanna. So, basically, then what you are saying is
	under the Reagan Administration and the Bush Administration,
	this other Bush Administration, these cases--it wasn't a
	blanket prosecution of everyone who came across the borders and
	what the Trump administration basically did was blanket
	prosecution. If you come across the border you are going to be
	prosecuted. Is that a fair----
	Mr. Horowitz. That is my general understanding. There could
	have been exceptions for particular U.S. Attorneys and
	particular unique circumstances. But our general understanding
	is that that was generally the case.
	Mr. Khanna. And when you are going to take such a move as
	overturning precedent that Reagan and Clinton and Bushes had
	set up that called for blanket prosecution, did they consult
	the U.S. Marshals Service when they took this position?
	Mr. Horowitz. They did not in advance of announcing the
	policy in April 2018.
	Mr. Khanna. And that is odd, right, because the U.S.
	Marshals Service is going to be, as part of the Department of
	Justice and they would be responsible for implementing this?
	Wouldn't you want to know what kind of burden this is going to
	put on your Marshals Service?
	Mr. Horowitz. It is critical. The marshals take custody of
	the defendant and they have to find a place for that defendant
	to have a jail cell. They are taken into the custody of the
	Justice Department through the Marshals Service.
	The Justice Department has a limited number of jail cells
	and if you are going to add hundreds of new defendants at each
	district, they have got to find places for those individuals.
	And as we detail here, it resulted in requiring them to
	triple bunk inmates in some instances and it ended up resulting
	in a $200 million plus shortfall for the Marshals Service.
	Mr. Khanna. What I found most shocking about your report
	is, though, they didn't have--they had no conversations, no
	discussions, correct, with----
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct, in advance of that April
	announcement.
	Mr. Khanna. And the Marshals Service found in an assessment
	that we would--they would continue to provide the best level
	effort to comply but there would inevitably be, quote, ``a
	degradation of service and security.''
	Inspector General Horowitz, what is meant by a degradation
	of service and security?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, the impact on the Marshals Service, in
	addition to having to find bed space for the additional
	defendants, they also need marshals to help manage those
	defendants, right, and take them into custody and do all the
	processing.
	That meant pulling people off of other job
	responsibilities, which has a cascading effect on, as we noted
	here through various documents we saw, the Marshals Service
	ability to continue to go out and execute arrest warrants,
	which is a core Marshals Service function.
	Mr. Khanna. Hasn't it made us less secure as a country
	because of it diverting marshals' resources away from things
	that were critical?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, as we note in here, that is certainly
	what the marshals expressed concern about, precisely that
	issue.
	Mr. Khanna. And that is because of the zero tolerance
	policy, correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That that was one of the impacts on them of
	the zero tolerance policy regarding your concern.
	Mr. Khanna. The U.S. Marshals Service is about protecting
	just more than politicians. You are saying the zero tolerance
	policy wasn't just inhumane with the bed issue but actually
	made our country less secure, from their perspective, according
	to----
	Mr. Horowitz. Again, that is, you know, what we found in
	the records of the Marshals Service and what we were told by
	the Marshals Service.
	Mr. Khanna. And last question, they have a $210 million
	deficit today. Is that also because of this zero tolerance
	policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, they had a $227 million or so hole in
	their budget back in the 2018-2019 time period. Congress had to
	do an emergency appropriation for them and the department had
	to reprogram other moneys to make up for that hole in their
	budget so that they could pay their costs.
	Mr. Khanna. Thank you.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Chairwoman and Ranking Member
	Comer. Thank you for holding today's hearing regarding the DOJ
	IG report on the Trump administration's immigrant child
	separation policy.
	Our Founding Fathers delivered us a representative republic
	that welcomes any person to become a part of this great country
	and to participate in the American dream while balancing the
	rule of law.
	For decades our country has struggled with this balance.
	How do we as a country enforce our laws and principles and
	protect our citizens while at the same time maintaining decency
	and compassion for those that are truly seeking refuge in our
	country?
	This should be a bipartisan effort to determine that
	balance. In addition to being a member of this committee, I
	serve as a member on the Homeland Security Committee and as the
	ranking member of the Border Security Facilitation and
	Operations Subcommittee.
	I have seen in person the challenges we face at our
	Nation's southern border, and I have to say we have serious
	challenges that are only further complicated by the Biden
	administration's recent actions.
	In a video I am about to show you, you will see how, more
	than ever, we need a strong secure border. Letting thousands of
	immigrants come here illegally that serves no good purpose,
	especially our citizens and those that have come here legally.
	We are a nation of opportunity and that should be embraced and
	continued. But we are, first, a nation of law.
	I ask that committee staff please start the video.
	[Video shown.]
	Mr. Johnson. Madam Speaker, I have a point of order.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman is not recognized.
	Mr. Johnson. Parliamentary inquiry, Madam Chair.
	Mr. Higgins. Madam Chair, reclaiming my----
	Ms. Tlaib. Will the gentleman please state the
	parliamentarian inquiry?
	Mr. Higgins. Madam Chair, please note the time.
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes, we will.
	Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Is it permissible for a member to show a video that has not
	been shared with the--with the other party prior to airing it
	in the--in a full committee meeting? Is that permissible under
	our----
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes. Member Johnson, I believe that the video
	was reviewed, according to our rules, with our committee staff.
	Mr. Johnson. Thank you. I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. Mr. Higgins, you are now recognized.
	Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate my
	colleague's concern. I would also appreciate in the future that
	the inquiry be restrained until a video that--obviously, we try
	and follow the rules around here--has been completed.
	Mr. Johnson. Well, it just seemed to be a hatchet job put
	together by the--put together by a partisan----
	Mr. Higgins. Reclaiming my time. Madam Chair, please note
	the--the chair lady get order in the committee, please?
	Ms. Tlaib. Mr. Higgins--time. Mr. Higgins, you are
	recognized.
	Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Inspector General Horowitz, you are familiar with DOJ
	numbers, are you not? Do you know how many American citizens
	that are parents of minor children are incarcerated in American
	incarceration system today?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman----
	Mr. Higgins. In the interest of time, I will give you the
	answer. It is about 750,000 American parents of minor children
	are incarcerated in our jails today, in our country. About 10
	million arrests take place each year. These are DOJ numbers.
	About 600,000 of those are juveniles.
	When we make an arrest, do we ask that arrested person,
	where is your kid? I have to take you to jail. Let us stop and
	pick up your kid. Do we bring those children to a jail? The
	answer is no.
	When we arrest a juvenile, we contact that juvenile's
	parents. But if that juvenile is placed in a juvenile detention
	center, do we put that parent in that juvenile detention
	center? No.
	So, it is very clear that if you don't want to be separated
	from your family, I suggest you don't commit a crime that is
	going to cause you to get arrested, and I encourage the scores,
	hundreds of thousands, that intend to cross our southern border
	over the course of this next year----
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Higgins [continuing]. That if you bring a kid with you,
	expect to get separated from your child because we don't put
	children in jail----
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Higgins [continuing]. In America unless they have
	committed a crime.
	Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from Missouri, Ms. Bush, is now
	recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Bush [continuing]. And I thank you, Madam Chair, for
	convening this important hearing.
	As I sit here today, I am reminded of a time as a young
	mother when I lost sight of my daughter in a clothing store. It
	was only a matter of seconds, but I felt a feeling of doom, of
	absolute dread, thinking, where is my child. Is she hurt? Is
	she calling out for me? I felt like the world was crashing down
	on me.
	Now, imagine feeling that feeling for 1,034 days. That is
	how long it has been since this policy was first announced,
	since mothers, fathers, and families first feared never seeing
	their child again.
	I am also thinking about St. Louis and the many years I
	spent in the streets as an organizer in our hospitals, as a
	nurse, and in our safe houses of pastors, counseling families
	who have experienced trauma and violence.
	Family separation is rooted in our Nation's history, let us
	be clear, harking back to black children being torn from their
	mothers' arms at slave auction blocks, including the very
	courthouse that now forms part of the iconic St. Louis skyline.
	But these historic crimes against humanity didn't only
	happen in St. Louis. Our country has forcibly removed Native
	children from their families. We separated Japanese children
	from their parents in internment camps. The scars of white
	supremacy are a trauma in our Nation's DNA. It is a lasting
	trauma that will stay with these children and their families
	forever.
	Mr. Horowitz, your investigation revealed that former
	Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a driving force of the zero
	tolerance policy, and though Stephen Miller is not named in
	your report, let us not forget that he played a central role in
	designing and carrying out this policy.
	White supremacy is a disease that turns cruel and hateful
	ideas into cruel and hateful policies that affect people.
	Inspector General Horowitz, according to your report, at
	least two parents were told by officers that their children
	were being taken for a bath. That was the last time they saw
	their children.
	In your experience, is it ever appropriate for law
	enforcement to deceive parents about their minor children in
	this way?
	Mr. Horowitz. I can't think of a circumstance,
	Congresswoman, where that would be appropriate.
	Ms. Bush. Thank you.
	Did you find any evidence that AG Sessions or Deputy AG
	Rosenstein took any action to determine the trauma, the
	anxiety, and the isolation imposed on small children and all
	children as a result of this practice?
	Mr. Horowitz. Our concern was that there wasn't a
	sufficient effort to try and understand how this would happen
	and how it would impact the ability to reunify later and the
	mistaken understanding that could have been learned. But that
	simply couldn't happen promptly in order to ensure
	reunification in a timely manner.
	Ms. Bush. OK. Well, it has become strikingly clear that
	though the zero tolerance policy is over, the impact endures.
	This is especially the case given the lasting impacts of the
	criminal charges lodged against these parents.
	In your report, Mr. Horowitz, you described the DOJ's focus
	on increasing prosecutions as, quote, ``single-minded,'' end
	quote.
	Can you restate for this record, please, the Department of
	Justice--the Department of Justice knowingly enacted the zero
	tolerance policy with the understanding that it would impose
	stronger criminal charges on family unit adults and force
	children away from their parents. Is that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct. That was, certainly, the
	understanding of Attorney General Sessions in our--as we found
	in our report when he announced the zero tolerance policy in
	April 2018 and his effort to encourage DHS to change its
	policy, which it did on May 4, to authorize or to start sending
	adult family members for criminal prosecution.
	Ms. Bush. So, in your estimation, would you say that this
	policy led to an increase in the number of felony and/or
	misdemeanor charges filed?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, it certainly resulted in a substantial
	increase in the number of misdemeanors. I believe it also
	resulted in a significant increase in the number of felonies
	but I would have to followup on that.
	Ms. Bush. Mr. Horowitz, who would have the answers to these
	questions?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, we can, certainly, get you the figures,
	Congresswoman, from here at the department on the increase in
	prosecutions. I just don't have them right in front of me.
	Ms. Bush. Thank you.
	I can never know the heartache of spending months and years
	without knowing if my child was in danger, hurt, or sick. But I
	do know any parent would do anything that they can to see their
	child again. It is essential that we reunite these families
	together.
	I strongly believe that we must remove the threat of
	criminalization and provide families with full amnesty and
	clear their records. This is the absolute least we can do.
	Thank you, and I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sessions, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Sessions. Thank you very much. I assume I can be seen
	and heard at this time. Madam Chairman, I assume I can be.
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes, we see you.
	Mr. Sessions. Yes. Thank you very much.
	What a delight it is for me to be with you today. Mr.
	Horowitz, thank you very much.
	Mr. Horowitz, is this a practice that takes place at our
	airports all across the United States of America where there is
	a less than adult person that might be a minor child that is
	with an adult? Are they questioned about the status of what
	they are doing with that child?
	Mr. Horowitz. You are talking about with domestic flights
	in the U.S.?
	Mr. Sessions. Absolutely, at every single airport in the
	United States and port of entry in the United States of
	America.
	Mr. Horowitz. Mm-hmm. Yes, they are asked if the two of
	them are together and the relationship.
	Mr. Sessions. What would happen if I were to enter an
	airport with someone that was not my child? What process would
	take place here in the United States with American United
	States citizens?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, I think if you are traveling
	domestically--I am not sure whether there would be much
	differently done. If you are with an adult and a child you
	don't necessarily have to be----
	Mr. Sessions. But you would be asked. You would be asked
	and expected to provide information, and when someone said,
	that is not my child, what would happen?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, I am not sure what would happen on a
	domestic flight. Internationally, there are issues that result
	because of Federal laws about international parental kidnapping
	and other issues where you want to make sure before someone is
	allowed to leave the country with a child that they, in fact,
	have authority to go with that child inside the country.
	Mr. Sessions. Do you believe that that process or what
	should be that process for people who are entering the United
	States of America--there is some suggestion that we should not
	even ask who these people are and determine who they are.
	But if a person was not that direct parent, what should
	happen to that child and what should be the question that is
	asked and action by the United States Border Patrol?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, let me say, this is--you know,
	obviously, this is a Department of Homeland Security Border
	Patrol, as you said, issue and policy. I am presuming that
	with--in any instance, they are looking to figure out who the
	two people are in actuality and, indeed, as we noted here and
	as I mentioned earlier, that is part of the issue with the
	assumption that all of this could have happened so quickly,
	right.
	That is precisely the issue with expecting a prosecution to
	happen in the same day, right. You want people to have that
	ability to know who people really are.
	Mr. Sessions. Right. But before you go to prosecution, I am
	talking about process.
	Mr. Horowitz. No, right.
	Mr. Sessions. I was down on the border in 1914, 1915, and
	1916. I saw these cages that are referred to as cages. It was a
	detention facility. It was placing people in areas until they
	could be properly vetted and looked at that they placed them in
	them, all along the border, especially in the Southern District
	of Texas, in the Western District of Texas, and these people
	were given food and clothing. But they were makeshift
	operations because of the overwhelming number of people who
	were there.
	Second, I saw firsthand how these agents would attempt to
	determine who was traveling with who, and many times it became
	a whisper about, say that is your child.
	But when people were then--under the Obama years, then
	agents took to really try and make sure that there was not a
	mismatch of child--moving children across illegally or an
	exploitation perspective.
	They would separate those people, especially with younger
	boys and younger girls, and they would have a very, very
	difficult time. These were some of the things we struggled with
	during President Obama's presidency and it was an overwhelming
	number.
	I want you to know that I applaud the work that you are
	doing. I applaud the work of being as a watchdog. But when tens
	of thousands of people come across and they are at the
	detention----
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Sessions. Thank you very much, Chairwoman.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Welch, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Welch. Thank you very much. Thanks very much for your
	work, Inspector.
	The zero tolerance policy, obviously, was about
	intimidating families, and the zero tolerance policy, where it
	implemented as a tactic taking a child from the parent, was the
	most effective way of intimidating.
	Do you have any information about how it is that despite
	the fact they were going to implement this policy there was no
	systematic way to maintain knowledge as to where a child was
	sent, and we still have many children who are separated from
	their families?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, based on--according to court filings,
	there are--there is still an ongoing problem with reuniting
	children who were separated back during this 2018 time period
	with their adult family unit members, and it is precisely the
	problem with failing to consider these issues before you
	implement the policy, then waiting until afterwards to see what
	they are and, as we noted earlier, the 2017 El Paso Initiative
	highlighted some of the problems that DHS and HHS were having
	with keeping track of the children and their parents.
	Mr. Welch. So, do you--in your report, just describe what
	steps were not taken or even what steps were taken to have a
	coordinated approach so that leaving aside the immorality of
	taking children from parents, the absolute obligation that we
	had--this government had in using its authority to maintain
	information so that when there was going to be a reunification
	we would know who to call and where the child was. Was there
	anything in there that they did to be prepared for that?
	Mr. Horowitz. There was, frankly, little to nothing that we
	found that showed preparation for interagency coordination,
	U.S. Attorney coordination with other executive branch
	agencies, particularly HHS, or the courts on how to do this.
	There weren't the most rudimentary steps taken before the April
	announcement.
	Mr. Welch. All right. So, aside from the obvious cruelty of
	taking a child from parents, there was the incompetence in the
	administration of this cruel policy. Is that a fair statement?
	Mr. Horowitz. There was incompetence in failing to consider
	what the issues were and, frankly, the mistaken belief that you
	could do all this in a day, the prosecution, right.
	This was--it was, potentially, founded on the belief that
	you could get an adult from DHS custody to the Marshals Service
	custody, get them in front of the judge, have them plead--get
	them a lawyer, have them plead guilty, have them sentenced, and
	get them back to DHS within 72 hours so that the child wasn't
	separated and sent to HHS, and that, as we lay out here, was a
	practical impossibility in almost all cases.
	Mr. Welch. Well, I really appreciate the detail in your
	report because what it reveals, aside from the obvious cruelty
	of the policy, is that we had a government that was not paying
	attention to the function that an executive has to make things
	work as opposed to simply make pronouncements that had a
	political orientation.
	So, I thank you for your work, and I yield back.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Keller, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Keller. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate being part
	of the hearing today.
	However, I can't help but point out that while there were
	some problems with the zero tolerance policy, the Trump
	administration abandoned this initiative over two years ago and
	made thousands of pages of documents available to this
	committee for investigation.
	I would also note that a flawed policy rollout does not
	make border security any less important or make the
	consequences of open border policy any less dangerous and
	irresponsible.
	DHS concluded that border barriers are a critical component
	getting operational control of the border and allow Border
	Patrol agents to decide where border crossings take place and
	apprehend individuals on our own terms.
	Yet, the Biden administration has taken executive action to
	stop barrier construction, working firmly against congressional
	intent of appropriating funds specifically to construct a
	barrier along the southern border in the interest of national
	security.
	Mr. Horowitz, your report indicates that the rollout of the
	zero tolerance policy failed to consult various agencies about
	its details. In an effort to improve DOJ policy rollouts in the
	future, what specifically should be done to ensure better
	agency cooperation?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, we made a recommendation as to that,
	that the department put in place a policy that makes it
	explicitly clear that--to the stakeholder to--the components of
	the department that when you undertake a significant policy
	change that cuts across DOJ components and executive branch
	agencies that you make sure to consult with them in advance.
	You know, as I noted earlier, that may seem obvious. But,
	as we note here, it didn't happen and----
	Mr. Keller. So, when did they make the change? When did
	that change in policy made?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, we are waiting for a report back from the
	department on what they have done to implement it. The outgoing
	acting attorney general, Mr. Rosen, indicated they would be
	taking that--undertaking that effort and we are expecting a
	report within the next month or two.
	Mr. Keller. So, the Trump administration had already made
	the decision to make that correction and have the coordination?
	Mr. Horowitz. They supported and agreed with the
	recommendation.
	Mr. Keller. OK. Several DHS personnel testified before this
	committee in 2019 recommending policy changes such as modifying
	the Flores settlement to allow us to keep immigrant families
	together past the 20-day threshold, improving the Trafficking
	Victims Protection Reauthorization Act by allowing the
	repatriation of children to noncontiguous countries, and
	challenging the credible fear standard to allow families to
	more easily prove an asylum issue.
	Can you speak to these recommendations and what overlap
	there might be with your report?
	Mr. Horowitz. Certainly, and, of course, the policy
	decision is Congress' and the executive branch. But what we
	found was that the provisions in the Flores settlement and that
	had been statutorily enacted, as you indicated, put time limits
	on how long children could be kept in custody with DHS
	detention facilities and a misunderstanding at the Justice
	Department at what that meant with the ability to undertake a
	criminal prosecution and reunify the parent with the child
	before the child was sent by DHS to Homeland--to Health and
	Human Services as required by the law.
	Mr. Keller. OK. Thank you.
	I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from Florida, Ms. Wasserman
	Schultz, is recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Sorry, my arrow was not
	going to my mute button.
	[Laughter.]
	Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and
	congratulations. You are doing a bang-up job.
	Inspector General Horowitz, I appreciate you appearing
	before the committee today. I would like you to help us
	understand who knew what and when as the zero tolerance policy
	was developed by the Department of Justice.
	I think the timeline could inform the motivation behind
	this policy. Attorney General Sessions announced the zero
	tolerance policy on April 6, 2018. According to your report,
	only two days earlier on April 4 Attorney General Sessions
	directed the creation of a memorandum that would accomplish
	this goal of a zero tolerance prosecution policy at the border.
	On that same day, a top DOJ official reached out to the
	five Southwest border U.S. Attorneys to ask if there was
	anything, quote, ``operationally objectionable.''
	So, my first question is when the staff policy directive
	was provided to those U.S. Attorneys on April 4, were they
	aware a zero tolerance policy would result in children being
	separated from their families?
	Mr. Horowitz. We were told by them and by the record we saw
	that they were not. They assumed that the policy at DHS, the
	long-standing policy would continue of not referring adult
	members, and no one said to them that there was any thought
	being given to changing that policy.
	Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. And were they made aware that
	such a policy would result in child separations before the
	formal announcement of the policy two days later?
	Mr. Horowitz. They were not made aware until at the
	earliest, roughly, May 1.
	Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Wow. OK. So, at the time the
	Department of Justice announced the zero tolerance policy,
	which is a change that would lead to the forced separation of
	thousands of children from their families, the very attorneys
	who were expected to carry it out were not informed of these
	dire and calamitous implications. Is that a fair assessment?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct, and I will add,
	Congresswoman, the policy they were shown on April 4 and that
	was announced on April 6, had a key phrase in there, which was
	``to the extent practicable.''
	So, it provided that they would--all cases would be
	prosecuted to the extent practicable, which the U.S. Attorneys
	told us they believed and others told us they believed gave
	them some discretion in deciding which cases to prosecute,
	recognizing they didn't still appreciate that that would also
	be including family referrals of adult family unit members.
	Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. And but--now this is extremely
	appalling. Your review found that Attorney General Sessions
	himself was aware that the implementation of zero tolerance
	would lead to the separation of families. He knew just what it
	would do. Isn't that right?
	Mr. Horowitz. That was, certainly, his intention when he
	announced the policy on April 6.
	Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And so because Sessions knew the
	chaos and suffering this policy would cause, he needed to hide
	and rush it out the door without any vetting. The cruelty of
	this policy was the point, and Jeff Sessions would not be
	deterred.
	The deception that former Attorney General Sessions used to
	cover up the vicious goals at the heart of this policy is
	deeply disturbing and for anyone who took part in or defends
	such a cold-blooded policy to this day, good luck settling up
	that merciless behavior with your maker.
	Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Inspector General
	Horowitz, good to see you again----
	Mr. Horowitz. Good to see you.
	Mr. Biggs [continuing]. Across the table again, but this
	will have to do, I guess.
	Just a basic fundamental question. Should DHS and DOJ
	enforce the law?
	Mr. Horowitz. Certainly.
	Mr. Biggs. Yes. So, in 8 U.S.C. Section 1325, it makes it a
	crime to enter this country illegally, right?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Mr. Biggs. And you said earlier--you were talking about the
	misdemeanor. If you look under 8 U.S.C. 1325 you are going to
	find that any alien who crosses the first time that is a
	misdemeanor; every other time is a felony. Is that right?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct, and there are other
	aggregating factors that could make it into a felony.
	Mr. Biggs. Exactly. Right. So, your report states that
	prior practice was not to prosecute family units or even the
	adult members of family units, and that is what people like
	would say that is the catch and release program, right?
	Some of us would say that was an incentive or magnet for
	people to come to this country illegally. Does 8 U.S.C. Section
	1325 have an exception for adults if they are part of a family
	unit, an exemption from prosecution, if you will?
	Mr. Horowitz. No, it does not contain such an exception.
	Mr. Biggs. So, we are focusing on old policies and the
	rollout was not good. There is anybody that would say it was.
	It didn't--and it was a very short-lived policy that affected a
	good number of children and families, and also those who were
	exploiting as well.
	And I would suggest that the policy that we are talking
	about today also puts children in danger and exploitation and
	being trafficked, and then some of the things that are being
	proposed by this administration--I am going to review them real
	quickly--also become magnets or incentives: stopping
	construction of the wall, ending new enrollments in the MPP, an
	executive order that suggests that the asylum cooperative
	agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are going
	to end, potentially ending the CDC's Title 42 order, preventing
	ICE from using terms such as ``alien'' and stopping
	deportations for 100 days, which has, luckily, been blocked,
	and last but not least, the biggest magnet of them all is talk
	of amnesty.
	And so if the past is any indicator, open border policies
	and these types of policies actually incentivize people to come
	to this country and bring children with them, even those that
	aren't their own, and that allows cartels and human smugglers
	to exploit children in a way that I have seen firsthand.
	I have watched the cracking of cases nationwide originating
	in Yuma, tracking down all the way to Charleston, South
	Carolina, where two young boys were repeatedly used as,
	basically, rent-a-childs, unfortunately, for those poor
	exploited children, to bring adults, unscrupulous adults,
	trying to use the family policy--family release policy.
	In Fiscal Year 2013, there were 14,855 apprehensions of
	family units on the Southwest border. But by 2018, there were
	107,000 and in 2019 there were 473,000 family units apprehended
	on the Southwest border.
	I also want to highlight that the Biden administration
	anticipates this surge. They have opened up, as my friend from
	Georgia mentioned earlier, Mr. Hice, a new facility--not a new
	facility but they are reopening the Carizzo Springs facility,
	which received such disapprobation from my colleagues across
	the aisle not too long ago.
	So, I would suggest that we need to focus on the
	implications of the current administration's policies.
	Now, I want to turn for a second to the Ms. L case. Mr.
	Horowitz, are you familiar with the Ms. L case?
	Mr. Horowitz. Generally, I am. But not in the weeds, or
	specifically, Congressman.
	Mr. Biggs. OK. So, you would not--you would not know that
	of the original 3,000 children reportedly subject to the Ms. L
	case--and they have found many placements, reunified many--but
	right now the number looks to be somewhere between 400 and 500
	children that are not unified under the Ms. L case. Are you
	familiar with that?
	Mr. Horowitz. I am. The number I had seen was just over 500
	but it could be more recently reduced. I haven't been following
	it as closely.
	Mr. Biggs. All right. Do you--any idea why we haven't been
	able to reunify some of those?
	Mr. Horowitz. I can't say I know the--you know, the 500-
	plus cases and how those came about and what those particular
	circumstances are.
	Mr. Biggs. Thanks for being here today, Inspector General.
	And Madam Chair, I have some documents I would like to
	enter into the record. Three of them are newspaper articles.
	One is a letter that I led with a number of my colleagues.
	``Biden Surge: 3,500 Migrants Caught at Border Daily, 'I'm
	Scared at What's Coming' '' from The Washington Examiner.
	``Biden Administration Prepares to Open an Overflow Facility
	for Migrant Children'' on CNN. ``Eleven Iranians Arrested in
	Arizona After Jumping U.S.-Mexico Border,'' The Washington
	Times. And then my letter dated February 4 today to the
	Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas, the U.S. Department of Homeland
	Security.
	Ms. Tlaib. Without objection.
	Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Ocasio-
	Cortez, is recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much, Chairwoman.
	Inspector General Horowitz, thank you so much, along with
	the rest of our witnesses, for being here today. While reading
	through your report, I couldn't help but notice how time and
	again concerns about the child separation policy were raised by
	government officials during the time, only to be dismissed by
	Attorney General Sessions and his top DOJ advisors.
	Officials reported up to Sessions and his top advisors that
	they could not track children and, again, this was during that
	time. They reported that resources were being stretched to the
	breaking point and U.S. Attorneys reported that they could not
	even answer basic questions in court about the children that
	were being separated.
	So, I wanted to know, Inspector General Horowitz, was it
	your finding that Attorney General Sessions and his top
	advisors pushed to continue all prosecutions under the zero
	tolerance policy and, effectively, kind of disregarded these
	concerns?
	Mr. Horowitz. Yes. So, what we found was that this
	understanding that somehow this could happen in a day,
	prosecutions, or within 72 hours became readily apparent, as
	you indicated, Congresswoman. Once it was implemented on May 4,
	going forward, reports kept coming in through U.S. Attorneys,
	meetings that were occurring, that this was a problem, that
	prosecutions weren't happening in that time period. And so that
	misunderstanding became clear, and that HHS and DHS were having
	trouble reuniting the adults, once they were prosecuted and
	sent back, with the child.
	That information became apparent, and it was even
	highlighted, frankly, beforehand, again, as we talked about
	earlier, with the El Paso Initiative, which the department got
	a briefing on in late December and had they asked these same
	problems, you know, were readily apparent from that initiative.
	Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I was also struck that when your office
	interviewed these former DOJ officials, they all tried to
	deflect blame and when asked about the rampant difficulties
	that other agencies had in tracking and reunifying families,
	the former Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein said, quote,
	``That is an issue that they should have flagged. I just don't
	see that as a DOJ equity.''
	Now, when top DOJ officials learned that children were
	being held by Border Patrol for longer than 72 hours, which was
	violating Federal law, did DOJ stop the zero tolerance policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, as all of this was occurring in May and
	these reports were coming out, there was no change in the zero
	tolerance policy. It only ended on June 20 with the executive
	order being issued that ceased it to be allowed to go forward.
	Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So, they--so they didn't. They knew that
	children were being held longer than 72 hours. They knew that
	Federal law was being violated in the detention of these
	children and they--and they continued the policy anyway.
	In fact, it seems Sessions dismissed this issue by pushing
	for even faster prosecution, saying, quote, ``We are in post-9/
	11 mode.''
	You know, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein claimed that
	it--that he would have supported the U.S. Attorneys if they
	said they would no longer prosecute all these parents. But Mr.
	Rosenstein also noted that AG Sessions was, quote, adamant that
	this program needs to continue, right?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct. That is what we were told
	and that even if information started coming in from the U.S.
	Attorneys that there was this problem with unifying children
	who had gone to HHS.
	That was the response they heard from the department
	leadership, that this was a problem that was not going to be
	addressed through changing the policy and, after all, you know,
	if the department had not taken the cases, obviously, the
	separations wouldn't have occurred. It was the department that
	had to accept the cases for prosecution.
	Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So, I think that really gets to the
	heart of this matter, which is that this was a deliberate
	choice. You know, whether or not, like, were these DOJ
	officials really powerless to stop these separations. It seems
	that they weren't.
	Inspector General Horowitz, what would have happened if
	the--if AG Sessions and the Justice Department simply said that
	they were going to return to prior longstanding policy and no
	longer prosecute all arriving parents?
	Mr. Horowitz. If the department stopped agreeing to accept
	these adults for prosecution, it wouldn't, obviously, have been
	transferred to the Marshals Service.
	They would have remained in DHS custody with the child that
	they were traveling. The child then wouldn't have been
	separated by being sent to HHS because they wouldn't have been
	unaccompanied. And so the separations would have stopped.
	Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you. Thank you very much.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Herrell, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Herrell. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr.
	Horowitz. I believe your report is very important.
	I do want to kind of piggyback on what Congressman Higgins
	said--played earlier, that President Trump eliminated loopholes
	in the asylum laws, increased funding for the border security,
	and brought calm to the chaos that we witnessed in 2018 and
	2019 along the border. Abruptly ending the successful
	initiatives will only bring back those days of chaos.
	In regard to child separation, it is clear the court
	reinterpretation of the Flores agreement is driving illegal
	immigration. Those with children used this agreement to skirt
	the consequences of our immigration system, and without
	consequences, illegal immigration will only skyrocket.
	Families should be kept together during their immigration
	procedures. The reinterpretation of the Flores settlement
	agreement forbids that. It is important to ensure that there is
	humane care for those in custody.
	Perversely, reverting to catch and release encourages the
	dangerous journey and puts more lives at risk to smugglers and
	cartels that prey on migrants. Many are beaten, raped, and
	killed on the journey to the United States.
	The answer is that cases need to be processed faster.
	However, immigration law cannot simply be ignored. I will work
	with any of my colleagues who want to streamline the
	immigration process by adding more judges, immigration lawyers,
	and courtrooms.
	No one wants prolonged detention. Adding resourcing to
	Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of
	Justice, not just defunding them as some of my colleagues have
	proposed, will help rapidly adjudicate immigration cases and
	minimize time in custody.
	We must also face the reality that most of these cases
	likely are not valid asylum cases. Historically, only about 21
	percent of applicants receive asylum. Without detention, many
	illegal immigrants will show up to court and will not obey
	court orders of removal.
	According to ICE, only 7 percent of family units with
	orders of removal are deported when not held in custody. Such
	statistics only exacerbate the immigration crisis and lead to
	more migrants taking this dangerous journey.
	Inspector Horowitz, would you agree that the Flores
	settlement agreement as interpreted by the Ninth Circuit Court
	of Appeals has made it impossible to hold families together
	during the course of their immigration proceedings?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congresswoman, I am not really in a position
	to comment on the impact of the Flores settlement. That
	wasn't--I can as to what it had here and the impact it had in
	this situation. But, more broadly speaking, we didn't look at
	that and that would, largely, be a Department of Homeland
	Security impact as well.
	Ms. Herrell. Right.
	And, Madam Chair and Inspector, thank you. This is
	something maybe we need to look at further as we move through
	this process.
	I want to thank the chairwoman and members for holding this
	meeting and I yield back my time.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me OK?
	Ms. Tlaib. Yes, sir, we can.
	Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you. Inspector General Horowitz, thank
	you for your presentation today, your work not just on this
	matter but on so many, which has been a critical resource for
	this committee and for Congress over a period of many, many
	years. I want to thank you for that.
	I wondered--I know that this is, largely, a look back
	hearing. That is the focus of it. But I wondered if you might
	speak to what you think the opportunities for reunification of
	these children with their parents and their families might be
	through the lens of the breakdowns you saw from the review that
	you did.
	So, in other words, presumably, there is evidence that you
	discovered that when separations occurred the records that
	should have been kept were not kept.
	The sort of custodial sequence of events wasn't properly
	captured, et cetera, and that must give you some insight and
	perspective as to how difficult it is going to be to try to
	reunify these children with their parents.
	So, if you could maybe speak broadly to that but also maybe
	identify two or three or four breakdowns in the process that
	you were able to review that you think are going to be
	contributing factors to the challenge that we will now have in
	trying to reunify these families.
	Mr. Horowitz. Right. Well, let me say, Congressman, that,
	you know, in the first instance, you would expect if anyone was
	going to be undertaking such a policy in the future, going
	forward, that you would, at a minimum, want to get together
	with the key stakeholders at the Justice Department, Department
	of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and figure out
	how to create a effective recordkeeping system that would
	enable you to know who entered the country with which traveling
	companion, including a child, so that if one of those
	individuals gets separated from the others, you know who is
	with whom.
	That sounds obvious, but it didn't happen here. And so you
	ended up in a situation where adults went to the Justice
	Department, children went to HHS, and DHS could connect the two
	and, as we noted, the Marshals Service didn't have a
	relationship with HHS where they could connect the two.
	So, that is, obviously, with electronic records, computer
	records today. You would think that would be something that
	would be easily done. But it wasn't done here.
	Mr. Sarbanes. What is the implication of that for the
	efforts to reunify? Where do you expect that there is going to
	be the most difficulty in tracking or making these connections
	from one agency to the next? I mean, you have spoken broadly
	but can you be a little more specific?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, I think one of the bigger challenges and,
	of course, this is part of the litigation that is ongoing now,
	and so the civil division lawyers at the Justice Department who
	are handling it, along with those at DHS and HHS, have probably
	the best insight into that.
	But my sense is, from looking at this and, you know, this
	is my informed information based on what we have looked at, is
	that some, if not many, of these adults or most of these adults
	had been deported already and so they are in another country
	while the children are still here.
	And if you haven't taken the steps or didn't take the steps
	back in 2018 to make sure you knew which adults were connected
	to which children, you now have to go through that process to
	make sure that the parent or adult coming forward is in fact
	the individual connected to that child. You don't want to
	create further problems.
	So, my sense is----
	Mr. Sarbanes. Let me ask you one more question.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Sarbanes. Oh, OK. I yield back. Thank you.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Norman,
	is recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Norman. Thank you, Chairman Tlaib.
	Inspector Horowitz, it looks like under the Biden
	administration we are going to be admitting millions of people
	coming across the border, 3,000 migrants from Honduras, vans
	everywhere.
	How is that going to affect--how is that going to affect
	the crisis we have with COVID? Will all of them be tested at
	the border? Will they go to the hospitals? How will that work?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, Congressman, I am not really in a
	position to answer that. You would really have to, and I can
	certainly help facilitate that, ask those at the Department of
	Homeland Security Border Patrol what their plans are with
	regard to how to handle that at this point in time. We didn't
	look at that, and, again, it is a Department of Homeland
	Security Border Patrol question.
	Mr. Norman. Yes, but it affects Homeland Security. I mean,
	it falls under--if it doesn't fall with you, who does it fall
	under?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, within Department of Homeland Security
	and their inspector general's office and their oversight of
	Border Patrol, but also the Border Patrol directly.
	Mr. Norman. And so they--from your understanding, they will
	hire the doctors or will they go to the hospitals, or do you
	just now know?
	Mr. Horowitz. To be honest, I do not know how they plan to
	handle that.
	Mr. Norman. OK. You admit we have got a pandemic, don't
	you?
	Mr. Horowitz. Oh, I, certainly, don't deny we have a
	pandemic.
	Mr. Norman. And this probably won't help it, I would think.
	But this goes to my next question.
	How can we improve the coordination between the DOJ, DHS,
	and HHS without adding more Federal debt and, I guess, being
	fair to the--to the immigrants that are going to be admitted
	into this country carte blanche?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, having been in the Justice
	Department on the prosecuting side and now as the inspector
	general, I don't think it requires spending any money.
	I think it just requires getting the appropriate working
	group at a high level at those entities that sit down with the
	line level people who know what is really going on day to day,
	and say OK, how do we make this work through our three agencies
	coordinating.
	It is, frankly, not, I don't think, that complicated. It
	doesn't require a lot of expense and, frankly, in today's video
	age, you don't even have to travel to get in a room together.
	You can do it by video.
	Mr. Norman. So, is it your testimony that if we admit
	millions into this country it is not going to cost this country
	anything, particularly with the testing of--I guess, assume
	testing for the COVID and to make sure the pandemic doesn't
	extend to 355 million Americans?
	Mr. Horowitz. No, Congressman. What I was talking about was
	making sure there is a coordination between the three. I wasn't
	talking about what they end up--how they end up implementing
	it.
	But the coordination, which was a basic flaw here, doesn't
	require much other than meeting and understanding what the
	issues were as happened after the policy was implemented. But
	that should have been done beforehand.
	Mr. Norman. OK. But the coordination is going to result in
	actions. The actions are going to follow. So, when you admit
	that many people or if you took out that many people from the
	country that will have a financial impact, correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, yes, I would expect that putting in
	place certain steps would require some funding.
	Mr. Norman. Yes, a good many--a good deal of funding, I
	would guess.
	How long after the implementation of the zero tolerance
	policy was that executive order issued? Do you--are you--do you
	know?
	Mr. Horowitz. It was about six weeks. Well, I am sorry, it
	was about two and a half months after the zero tolerance policy
	was announced on April 8--I am sorry, April 6--as the president
	issued the executive order on June 20.
	Mr. Norman. OK. OK, Ms. Chairman. I yield back.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congressman.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Speier, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Speier. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Inspector General, once again, you show we lucky we are
	that you are in the position that you are. Thank you for the
	service that you have given to us and the Department of Justice
	since 2012.
	I have had two trips to the border, one to McAllen, one to
	Brownsville, and I have seared in my memory two images in
	particular: a young girl, maybe four years old, in a cell at
	Border Patrol sobbing because she had been separated from her
	mother and then hundreds of kids in cells throughout that
	region, and then a separate one where I was meeting with others
	who had been separated from their children. Some of them were
	still breastfeeding their children and they didn't know where
	they were.
	So, you have underscored for us how this was implemented
	without any forethought and I have a few questions in
	particular. The record shows that child separations were
	harmful, traumatic, and chaotic, much more so than previously
	known. In fact, there were infants and toddlers that were
	separated from their families.
	Can you speak to whether or not DOJ officials knew that
	they were separating extremely young children from their
	parents?
	Mr. Horowitz. They, certainly, knew after implementation in
	May and June when complaints and questions started coming from
	the Southwest border U.S. Attorneys, both their own concerns
	and the concerns they were hearing from judges about those
	separations and the fact that children, infants, toddlers, and
	young children were being separated.
	Ms. Speier. And no special procedures were put in place to
	mitigate the trauma for these young children?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Ms. Speier. So, it was a truly callous act within the
	Department of Justice in not stepping in and providing some
	kind of mitigation.
	Mr. Horowitz. There was no effort to step in and change
	that. There were meetings and discussions, but until the
	executive order was issued on June 20 there was no changes to
	the approach.
	Ms. Speier. So, in your review, did you discover any
	physical and psychological harm that was done to these
	children?
	Mr. Horowitz. We didn't, Congresswoman, undertake that
	effort to look at the impact on the children, particularly
	since, you know, as has been talked about, there was an ongoing
	court case about that very--those very issues.
	Ms. Speier. You mentioned that there was over $200 million
	in budget deficit in the Marshals Service due to child
	separation. Have you been able to ascertain how much money has
	been spent as a result of this child separation disaster?
	Mr. Horowitz. We didn't get to an overall number. It would
	not only be, as you indicated, for the Justice Department, the
	Marshals Service. Obviously, also the additional costs for the
	U.S. Attorneys to the extent they added people to handle this.
	The courts would have had, potentially, some additional costs,
	DHS, HHS. We didn't go in and look at what those other costs
	would be as well.
	Ms. Speier. Is that something you could undertake in short
	order without making it a massive effort to find out just
	within the Department of Justice what the costs of child
	separation were?
	Mr. Horowitz. Yes, we can, certainly, make the inquiries of
	the appropriate components here at the Department to see if
	they gathered that data and what it would be, and we can also
	make contact with our counterparts in the OIGs at DHS and HHS
	and see if they have that data, based on the reviews they did.
	Ms. Speier. Madam Chair, I certainly would appreciate that
	if that would be appropriate.
	I would also like to ask you about the numbers. When it
	first became apparent that children were being separated, the
	numbers were indicated to be, like, 400, 500.
	And yet, within that short timeframe of May to June, you
	estimate that there were 3,000 children that were separated and
	probably much more over the course of the period in which this
	was in effect.
	Do you have any numbers that you could share with us or any
	evidence that there was an effort to tamp down the numbers?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, I have seen reports and numbers, largely,
	again, from the Department of Homeland Security Office of
	Inspector General and their work on this because DHS would be
	the keeper of what those numbers look like.
	The numbers that we have seen were in excess of 3,000 that
	they have reported. I have seen numbers reported as high as in
	the 5,000 range. But, again, we will followup, Congresswoman,
	and let you know what we have on that and what we can get from
	our counterparts at the OIGs.
	Ms. Speier. Thank you. My time has expired. I really
	appreciate your work.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congresswoman.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Donalds, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Donalds. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	To the IG, thanks so much for, you know, coming here and
	joining us, bringing your report.
	You know, I think it was said by, you know, one of my
	colleagues a little bit ago that this is, you know, really more
	of a look back meeting, and I think it is always interesting to
	learn things from the past.
	Obviously, you know, some of the issues for the zero
	tolerance policies have already been discussed so no need to
	really belabor that point.
	I do think it is important that, you know, that this
	committee also take a look at what is currently happening and
	also what has happened, you know, as a result since the end of
	zero tolerance policy back in 2018.
	You know, Mr. Horowitz, I wonder if you can comment for the
	committee on what actually has occurred with respect to
	enforcement after zero tolerance policy was ended by the
	previous administration in 2018.
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, I can't really speak to in any
	detail what occurred after that other than understanding that
	the DHS went back to its prior historical practice of not
	referring adults for prosecution except in limited--very
	limited circumstances.
	Mr. Donalds. OK. So, basically, in your words, what we have
	done since then is, you know, unfortunately, the spigot has
	just reopened and we are back to square one on the problem we
	do have, which is when people come to our border illegally
	they, essentially, are released into the United states, which
	does create other consequences and other unintended
	consequences for the citizens of the United States and,
	actually, with respect to legal immigrants who do come through
	proper channels.
	The only other question I really have for you, Inspector,
	is, you know, right now the Biden administration is going
	through the halting of several immigration policies from the
	previous administration.
	Can you speak to the halting of the MPP program--for
	everybody else who may not know, the Migrant Protection
	Protocols--and what the impact of that might actually be on the
	United States?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, I am, obviously, aware of the
	policy. We haven't done any work on that so I am not really in
	a position to speak to what was going on beforehand and what
	may be occurring going forward in light of any changes that
	are--that have been happening.
	Mr. Donalds. Well, what I think what I will do is I will
	just expound briefly. So, the MPP program, what it actually
	allowed for was the halting of people who are not legally
	admissible to the United States to actually have them held in
	Mexico as opposed to them coming to us on the border.
	With President Biden halting that program, what we are
	seeing the results are caravans of people, whether they might
	be minors or adults, coming to our southern border illegally,
	which does create issues not only for border enforcement, not
	only for--not only for the people who actually live on the
	southern border, our ranchers and the like, but also creating
	some undue burdens on citizens here in the United States.
	So, I think it is important that if we are going to
	continue to do these look back oversight meetings, we actually
	also hold oversight meetings on what the current administration
	is doing and the results it will have not only on immigration
	policy but on the citizens at large.
	With that, I yield back the rest of my time.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms. Kelly, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for calling this
	meeting and thanks to the witness.
	This new report from the DOJ IG is the latest in several
	nonpartisan reports from the last few years detailing the
	horrors of the Trump administration's child separation policy.
	I wanted to use my time to highlight two previous reports
	from the DHS inspector general on this topic.
	First, in September 2018, the DHS inspector general
	released an initial report on the zero tolerance policy. This
	report found that the Trump administration officials had
	falsely claimed in June 2018 that there was a, quote, ``central
	data base tracking separated families.'' The DHS inspector
	general found, quote, ``no evidence that such a data base
	exists.''
	Inspector General, can you draw a comparison to your
	report's finding that DOJ prosecutors were unable to determine
	location of separated children when asked by courts?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congresswoman, it is precisely that problem
	that no one had set up an appropriate tracking mechanism which
	the DHS OIG report, as you indicated, highlighted was one of
	the problems.
	Ms. Kelly. OK. The inspector general also concluded that
	the child separation policy took away critical resources from
	other DHS missions including, quote/unquote, ``patrolling and
	securing the border.''
	Your report found that these policies took away critical
	resources from DOJ missions as well. Can you elaborate on the
	impact of child separations on other missions that DOJ
	components are supposed to carry out?
	Mr. Horowitz. Certainly, Congresswoman.
	So, for the Marshals Service, for example, what we heard
	was its impact on its budget, creating a $200 million plus
	impact on its budget which, obviously, impacts all work, but
	also the need for the Marshals Service to bring in additional
	resources--other deputy marshals, other personnel, to help
	manage the influx of defendants that were coming in to the
	Southwest border, which meant pulling people off of, for
	example, task forces that involve and execute arrest warrants
	for wanted fugitives, other priority items for the Marshals
	Service.
	In addition, we heard from the U.S. Attorneys that it
	impacted their ability to prosecute certain other cases and,
	obviously, there are only so many prosecutors out there. There
	are only so many courtrooms. There are only so many judges to
	handle those cases. And so if you shift priorities, you create
	an issue.
	Ms. Kelly. Thank you.
	A second report from the DHS inspector general issued in
	November 2019 found that the DHS lacked the technology needed
	in order to successfully track separated families.
	Your report cites to this one several times. From your
	review, did the Trump administration resolve these
	technological issues as separations increased, and what other
	coordination issues did you observe in your review?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, one of our concerns was as it became
	apparent in May that there was a challenge and a problem with
	reunifying children with the adults, in fact, nothing changed.
	And so there were no efforts to respond to it as we found
	at the department. There were discussions, but there weren't
	steps taken. The policy remained in place. The separations
	continued to occur.
	The department continued to accept adults for prosecution
	even as it became apparent that DHS and HHS were having this
	problem with reunifying because of the lack of tracking.
	Ms. Kelly. Well, I just want to thank you again for your
	patience. I want to encourage my colleagues and officials in
	the Biden administration to really digest the findings from all
	of the reports.
	Thank you so much, and I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Comer, is
	recognized for five minutes, our ranking member.
	Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Inspector General Horowitz, isn't it the case that before
	the zero tolerance policy was initiated and then after it was
	ended the general practice was not to refer adult members of
	family units for criminal prosecution for misdemeanor illegal
	entry?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct, Congressman.
	Mr. Comer. I believe it was more often the case that border
	officials would simply process those family units together for
	administrative violations of immigration law.
	Mr. Horowitz. That is our finding.
	Mr. Comer. Issued them paperwork, including a notice to
	appear in immigration court and then released them to the
	interior of the United States. Is that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is my general understanding.
	Mr. Comer. Well, this is an important point. One of the
	reasons why we saw so many family units arriving in recent
	years, in my opinion, that adults who bring children into the
	U.S. illegally could all but guarantee their release into the
	interior of the U.S. while they wait for immigration
	proceedings to play out, which can take years, given the
	current immigration backlog.
	Inspector General Horowitz, isn't it true that this 1997
	settlement in Flores v. Reno, known as the Flores settlement
	agreement, sets the standard for the Federal Government's
	treatment of detained children and that because of this
	settlement agreement, children cannot be held in administrative
	immigration detention facilities together with their parents
	for longer than 20 days?
	Mr. Horowitz. I believe it is both the Flores settlement
	and then there is also the Trafficking Victims Protection
	Reauthorization Act, which codified some of that--those
	settlement provisions.
	Mr. Comer. So, that means that a person who illegally
	crosses the border with a child is, in most cases, simply
	released from Customs and Border Protection custody to await
	further immigration court proceedings. Is that right?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is, certainly, you know, one of the
	options that has to be undertaken in light of the law.
	Mr. Comer. OK. Well, those high numbers we saw family units
	crossing illegally, they reached a peak in the spring of 2019.
	But the numbers were starting to come down due to reforms the
	Trump administration put in place, which is what a majority of
	Americans want and expect.
	The Trump administration also put in reforms to the asylum
	system to ensure that people fleeing due to persecution would
	seek protection in the first safe country they arrived in, and
	that is a point that has not been made by the majority.
	Yet, President Biden, as one of his first acts in office,
	suspended enrollments in Migrant Protection Protocols. He has
	also vowed to rescind the safe third country agreements and
	roll back asylum for law reforms put in place by the Trump
	administration to ensure asylum integrity.
	But the open border lobby isn't satisfied with that. They
	want an end to the order issued by the CDC that allows
	immigration officials to immediately expel illegal border
	crossovers to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in border
	facilities.
	That would fit in with the Biden plan which, apparently,
	wants to vaccinate illegal aliens before they vaccinate
	Americans. The open border lobby also want to put an end to
	civil immigration detention capabilities altogether. They want
	to implement the failed policy of catch and release all over
	again.
	Combined with the reckless policies of gutting interior
	enforcement priorities, halting all construction of physical
	border barriers, and announcing an amnesty plan for 11 million
	people living in the United States illegally.
	I am concerned that, once again, our border will be overrun
	and we will start seeing another security and humanitarian
	crisis.
	In closing, I urge the Biden administration to turn back
	now. Listen to the experts, not the open border lobby. Build on
	the reforms put into place over the last years and don't tear
	them down.
	And with that, Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my
	time.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from Michigan, Mrs. Lawrence, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	I firmly believe a politician without compassion is a
	criminal, and what we saw happen to these children being
	separated from their parents is criminal.
	At our hearing in July 2019, Elora Mukherjee, a professor
	and volunteer attorney working with children detained along the
	border, testified about her visit to the Customs and Border
	Patrol facility in Clint.
	She quoted, ``Children are hungry. Children are
	traumatized. They constantly cry and some wept in their
	interviews with me. One six-year-old girl detained all alone
	could only say, 'I am scared. I am scared. I am scared,' over
	and over again. She couldn't even say her name.''
	Inspector Horowitz, to your knowledge, did Attorney General
	Sessions or department leadership ever inquire about the
	condition of the children in the detention center that housed
	them once they had been removed from their parents?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congresswoman, I don't know, as I sit here,
	if they ever did that. What I can say is there was no effort to
	change the policy while it was underway as reports came in
	about the problems that were occurring with reunification.
	Mrs. Lawrence. I want to play a video of an interview of a
	teenage girl recently reunited with her mother.
	Will the committee please play the video?
	[Video shown.]
	Mrs. Lawrence. Committee, I am really troubled about the
	protection of previous policies without having the compassion
	to recognize what these children, based on directions of an
	administration and this House, have gone through.
	I want to ask you again, Inspector, to your knowledge did
	Attorney General Sessions or department leadership make any
	effort to mitigate the trauma to children caused by family
	separation under the zero tolerance policy?
	Mr. Horowitz. We didn't see evidence of any effort to
	mitigate the impact of it when--between the May 4 start date
	through the June 20 executive order other than the only thing
	we saw were additional meetings and discussions, for example,
	with the courts. But the policy remained the same.
	Mrs. Lawrence. These stories are hard to hear, but we
	cannot forget that the suffering caused by the Trump
	administration's inhumane immigration policies continue to this
	day. We cannot ignore the pain our country has caused these
	children.
	We must right this wrong and we must ensure that these
	atrocities never happen again. We have a responsibility for the
	harm that we have caused, based on a direction of an
	administration and their leadership.
	Thank you, and I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Davis, is
	recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Davis. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I want to thank
	you, Inspector, for not only your work but being here with us
	today.
	Let me begin by just simply stating that I think the zero
	tolerance policy is really one of the most horrific ideas that
	anyone could come up with in relationship to trying to get a
	handle of or control the flow of immigrants coming into our
	country, which professes to say, give me your tired, your
	huddled masses.
	And so I just want to make it known that I think the policy
	was corrupt from the beginning. Not to be redundant, but under
	questioning from representatives before you indicated that you
	saw no effort on the part of our government authorities to
	change the policy.
	But did you see any corrective action as you looked and as
	you searched and as you did your work? Did you see any
	corrective action in relationship to those individuals who had
	already been separated?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, I mean, we--you know, what we
	saw was this mistaken belief before the policy was announced,
	the failure to coordinate before the policy was announced, and
	when the policy was implemented in May, on May 4, with the
	separations occurring and the problems arising and the notice
	coming up, that was additionally concerning to us because there
	weren't efforts undertaken to mitigate it that way. The policy
	continued until it was--the executive order was issued by the
	president on June 20.
	Mr. Davis. Do we understand or do we know what, to the best
	of your knowledge, how many children and families are still out
	there, disconnected?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, based on our review and what we have seen
	in the ongoing civil litigation, the lawsuit that is going on,
	the last number I saw was just north of 500 and, again, I am
	not, obviously, following it day to day but that is
	approximately what the number was that I saw of the estimates.
	Mr. Davis. As you researched and looked and unraveled and
	dissected, did you glean any indication of how long it might
	take to correct this action or to reconnect?
	Mr. Horowitz. Well, from the court filing it looks like it
	is a very significant challenge and it is unclear, frankly, how
	long it might take because some of the parents, obviously, are
	no longer in the country and reuniting in that circumstance and
	even identifying connectivity--you know, connections between a
	parent and a child or an adult and a child at that point is a
	challenge.
	Mr. Davis. Well, as others have done, let me commend you
	for your work, for your service to our country, and thank you
	very much, Madam Chair.
	And I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman from California, Vice Chair Gomez,
	is recognized for five minutes.
	Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	What can I say about this hearing? I look at this hearing
	as, like, accountability and lessons learned from the Trump
	administration's child separation policy. I only learned one
	lesson--you know, one main lesson, which is this never should
	have happened. Never should have happened, and it infuriates me
	because they--this administration didn't care about the
	repercussions and the trauma that would be caused to these
	children. They didn't care. It was--it was so tunnel-visioned
	when it came to trying to enforce immigration laws to prevent
	people from coming, and they did it in a way in order to
	dissuade and try to create a situation where parents wouldn't
	want to come. They wanted to make it so bad that parents would
	decide not to come to the United States.
	Coming from parents that did immigrate from Mexico, you
	know, a lot of these folks are desperate. They are oftentimes
	facing hard economic situations, hard--you know, they are
	facing violence.
	My parents faced just tough, tough times. Lived in a one-
	room adobe house in Mexico. And people are asked, are you going
	to take that risk?
	Yes, they are going to take that risk because it is, like,
	they can risk coming here and making it or they can stay back
	home and having their kids die of either violence or starvation
	and, for them, it is a risk worth taking.
	But this administration didn't care about the consequences
	and the impact it would have on kids. So, the main lesson I
	learned is that this never should have happened at all, and now
	we can pick it apart and find out what they didn't do right and
	hold them accountable, which we are going to do. But it just
	shouldn't have happened from the beginning.
	One of the things is that we know that it has tremendous
	impact on the kids that were separated, psychologically. The
	trauma associated with it is so severe. I want to read a quote
	from the former president of the American Psychological
	Association, Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel.
	It says, ``The longer that children and parents are
	separated, the greater the reported symptoms and anxiety and
	depression for the children. Negative outcomes for children
	include psychological distress, academic difficulties and
	disruptions in their development.''
	In fact, because there is so much risk of harm, the
	American Psychological Association has made reunification of
	children with their families one of its top priorities. Other
	medical professionals agree.
	Dr. Colleen Kraft, a former president of the American
	Academy of Pediatrics, said studies overwhelmingly demonstrate
	the irreparable harm caused by breaking up families.
	So, Inspector Horowitz, are you familiar with these
	opinions of long-lasting impact on trauma of the children?
	Mr. Horowitz. Congressman, I, certainly, read the articles
	about them and seen various experts speak to that.
	Mr. Gomez. And, you know, you know and I know we don't
	really need the experts to tell us that that was going to
	happen. But it just reinforces just how devastating this policy
	was for these families.
	Your review found also that Attorney General Sessions and
	the Justice Department leadership knew that children would be
	separated from their parents as a result of the zero tolerance
	policy. Is that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Mr. Gomez. So, they knew--I can assume that they knew that
	the trauma that would be caused by separating the kids--let us
	say they knew that--but they did it anyways, and that is the
	shame of this zero tolerance policy, that this administration
	engaged in it but didn't care about the consequences and the
	impact--the negative impact it would have on the kids.
	Maybe it is because they didn't believe that kids of
	undocumented immigrants deserved any more care and
	understanding and didn't care if they were harmed because they
	weren't, quote/unquote, ``U.S. citizens.''
	So, it is something that is still troubling me. I went down
	to the border--I actually slept on the border--to watch some of
	the asylum seekers get in and everything from this
	administration, when it came to immigration, was just terrible
	because they didn't care about the repercussions it would have
	on anybody.
	So, it is something that we have to fix. I am still really
	troubled by the fact that these kids have been--there are still
	some kids that have been separated. How many have--are still
	separated and how many are we trying to still reunite, and is
	it even possible?
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mr. Horowitz. So just, you know, in terms of the numbers,
	the last numbers I have seen from the court litigation is
	around 500 still being separated--still separated from the
	adult that they traveled here with, and, obviously, the
	challenges in reunifying in that circumstance when the child is
	here and the adult is overseas are pretty substantial.
	Mr. Gomez. Thank you. I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. The gentlewoman from Massachusetts, Ms.
	Pressley, is recognized for five minutes.
	Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Madam Chair.
	Many of our colleagues on either side would have us believe
	we must simply move on from the horrid policy violence enacted
	on so many marginalized communities over the last four years of
	the Trump administration.
	Well, I, certainly, refuse to just move on. To be clear, we
	will not move on until there is accountability, until there is
	restitution, until there is justice for these families, and
	until every single one of these 628 children are reunited with
	their parents. The trauma inflicted on these children by the
	U.S. Government will always be a dark stain on our Nation's
	history.
	I will never forget what I witnessed during our trip to the
	southern border, mothers who I held in my arms as they cried
	out for their babies and begged for help. It is something I
	will never forget, something our Nation must never forget, and
	something we as policymakers must ensure never happens again.
	And while today's hearing is on the Trump administration's
	cruel and callous family separation policy, it is important to
	recognize that for decades our immigration system has been
	built on separating families. From those seeking asylum at the
	border to the families preyed upon by ICE in the Massachusetts
	7th congressional District, and communities across the country
	every single day.
	So, we must look at this issue holistically and work to
	build an immigration system that finally centers the dignity
	and humanity of all our immigrant neighbors.
	So, Inspector General Horowitz, thank you for your work on
	this report. It is clear that the Trump administration
	officials knew full well the pain and harm they were inflicting
	with this policy.
	On Tuesday, President Biden signed an executive order to
	create a task force to reunify the hundreds of families that
	were separated as a result of this policy. It is an important
	step toward healing.
	But healing also requires that we hold these individuals
	accountable who were the cruel masterminds behind these
	policies. Your report notes that former Attorney General Jeff
	Sessions declined to be interviewed by your office as a part of
	the review.
	This was despite him being a driving force in leading DHS
	to separate families by referring parents for prosecution. Is
	that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Ms. Pressley. Do you believe Mr. Sessions should have been
	interviewed?
	Mr. Horowitz. Absolutely.
	Ms. Pressley. He was, largely, responsible for implementing
	the zero tolerance policy and continuing to prosecute parents
	even after his own officials told him they could not provide
	basic information to courts about the separated families. Is
	that correct?
	Mr. Horowitz. That is correct.
	Ms. Pressley. Your report also found that Deputy AG Rod
	Rosenstein was also heavily involved in the decision to
	separate families. In fact, Mr. Rosenstein was recorded on a
	call instructing U.S. Attorneys not to decline any cases due to
	the age of children in family units.
	Like former AG Sessions, Mr. Rosenstein was also made aware
	of rampant problems from the U.S. Attorneys as separations
	increased.
	Does your investigation suggest that Mr. Rosenstein took
	any action to try to stop the policy, even as department
	resources were overwhelmed and thousands of families were being
	separated?
	Mr. Horowitz. So, what we found is the policy was
	implemented in May and in June. No steps were taken by the
	department, including by the deputy attorney general or others
	in the department to change the policy while it was underway,
	and that only ceased on June 20 when the executive order was
	issued. Mr. Rosenstein did go to meetings with the courts, did
	have meetings with the prosecutors, but the policy itself was
	unchanged.
	Ms. Pressley. Child abuse, plain and simple. I don't know
	how they sleep at night knowing they employed someone
	responsible for this type of injustice. It is really beyond me.
	Inspector General Horowitz, your report brings us closer to
	the truth. I look forward to working with my colleagues to
	ensure that it will bring us even closer to justice.
	Thank you, and I yield.
	Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Congresswoman.
	Ms. Tlaib. Before we close, I want to recognize Ranking
	Member Comer for any closing remarks.
	Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and again, I want to
	thank Mr. Horowitz for testifying today and thank him for his
	work on this issue and many others.
	Clearly, the zero tolerance policy suffered serious
	implementation defects. I hope that with the inspector
	general's report these will never be repeated.
	But I remain concerned, as are most Americans, with our
	current border security situation and the policies of the Biden
	administration with respect to border security.
	I urge my colleagues to conduct oversight in this area. You
	know, we have spent the last two years with countless
	investigations of the Trump administration, and I know that
	this--the Democrats on this committee were addicted to
	investigating Donald Trump.
	But I have some news for you. Donald Trump is no longer
	president. Joe Biden is president. So, we have got a situation
	with respect to border security and with respect to our 11
	million Americans who are unemployed, with the hundreds of
	millions of Americans who currently haven't had access to COVID
	vaccine.
	But, yet, we spend more time today investigating the Trump
	administration. I am glad the Trump administration took the
	zero tolerance policy that was started by the Biden
	administration and corrected that.
	Now it is time to move on. It is time to focus on our
	border security, and I, again, urge President Biden and his
	administration to take the crisis at the border seriously and
	let us not repeat history.
	With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. Thank you.
	Inspector General Horowitz, I want to thank you and your
	staff for your critically important work we have been
	discussing today.
	Nearly two years ago, I went to the Southwest border and
	visited just a few of the thousands of children separated from
	their families as a result of the Trump administration's cruel
	and inhumane immigration policy.
	It was very difficult for me as a mother. I mean, what do
	you say to a child who is suddenly taken from their parents and
	doesn't know when they will see them again?
	What do you say to a child who sits all day in a fenced-in
	space they call, quote, ``icebox?'' What do you say to our
	children, our grandchildren, when they ask us how did this
	happen and what did we do about it?
	As you have heard today, Attorney General Sessions and
	other top officials in the administration knew this would
	happen. They intended it to happen. And even though Trump
	administration's cruel zero tolerance policy has been
	rescinded, the harm still exists and there is much work to do.
	We must demand accountability for the officials who
	instituted this policy with no regard for the trauma and
	lifelong consequences for the children it impacted.
	We must try to right the wrongs committed against these
	children, reunite those who remain separated to this day, and
	support the families as they deal with the deep trauma they
	have experienced. And we must ensure that our country, that we
	never, never needlessly separate children and weaponize them
	with trying to address the immigration crisis.
	Finally, before I adjourn today's hearing, I want to take a
	moment to express my deep condolences, all of our condolences,
	to our colleague, Jim Cooper, whose wife, Martha, passed away
	this morning. Our thoughts are with you and your family during
	this very difficult time.
	And because I want to also take care of two procedural
	matters, first, I want to recognize the ranking member to
	announce the subcommittee ranking members.
	Ranking Member Comer?
	Mr. Comer. Thank you again, Madam Chair, and we are very,
	very excited to have three returning ranking members to the
	House Oversight Committee.
	We have returning ranking member of the National Security
	Subcommittee, Mr. Glenn Grothman from Wisconsin, returning
	ranking subcommittee member of the Government Operations
	Subcommittee, Mr. Jody Hice from Georgia.
	We have returning as the ranking subcommittee member of
	Economic and Consumer Policy, Michael Cloud from Texas, and I
	am very pleased to announce two new ranking members for the
	Environment Subcommittee. Pleased to announce Ralph Norman of
	South Carolina will be our ranking member. And, finally, the
	new ranking member of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
	Subcommittee will be Mr. Pete Sessions from the great state of
	Texas.
	Yield back.
	Ms. Tlaib. Thank you.
	Next, the clerk has distributed two lists in advance naming
	both majority and minority members to subcommittees. I move
	that the list naming members to subcommittees be approved.
	Without objection, so ordered.
	Ms. Tlaib. Now, in closing, I want to thank our panelist
	for his remarks and I want to commend my colleagues for
	participating in this important conversation.
	With that, without objection, all members have five
	legislative days within which to submit additional written
	questions for the witnesses to the chair, which will be
	forwarded to the witnesses for his response. I ask the witness
	to please respond as promptly as you are able.
	This hearing is adjourned.
	[Whereupon, at 1:18 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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