this economic communicators come a conversation with a new president of the national association of broadcasters, former oregon senator, gordon smith. costarred as this week is gordon smith, ceo of the national associate broadcasters come a familiar face to c-span viewers. desert in the united states senate from 1996 to 2008 and he was on the covers committee during that time which is very much involved in telecommunications policy. our guest reporter this week,

john edgerton. i want to start really so much but not communications but with supreme court decision this week. and i'm going to ask you what they're ruling on campaign finance means for your members. >> guest: well, i probably should just admit i never voted for mccain so i actually think it's a good decision for freedom of speech. ultimately you can't get on tv or radio without paying for it. broadcasters have lots of costs and production of content. and the american people rely on tv and radios and ultimately i suspect the means there will be more political advertising. but i think the best part of the ruling was full disclosure. i think the more that's disclosed, the american people can make judgment as for who is for whom and why. and an informed citizenry is the

best. i think it does help in terms of retirement advertising is down. >> host: john and i are going to ask you lots of detailed questions about policy and the current in washington. before we get into the nuts and bolts i buy to let you talked to us about what you see your members business looking like ten years from now. >> guest: i actually am very optimistic about broadcasting the future, both in the radio site and in terms of high definition radio taking off. i don't know whether savio satellite radio will grow but i think people love their radios and is the ubiquitous part of being in america, having a radio and for the news entertainment, sports, politics, and emergency services. in terms of television, i think the digital transition has reawakened the future for tv broadcasting, with the digital

television you get a better picture, you've got three be coming soon. and you will find what's called multicasting with stations now able to offer unique channels, perhaps children's channels, sports channels, whether channels, in addition to their traditional broadcast signal. this just means more opportunities for the public, if they want to get it the old-fashioned way they can get it for free right over the public airwaves. >> host: well, to get to that, you have to have spectrum here in spectrum is the elephant in the room in any discussion about broadcasting the faith. can you briefly explain the issue on why you are so concerned about it? >> guest: well, the spectrum for your viewers is basically the highways of the airwaves and it's the way the federal communication organize this, you

know, signals so that there is not interference from one channel to another. and in an age where people are becoming very hoped to their blackberries and iphone thing i have one of each and i love them. and with laptops and the demand for wi-fi space, it will in coming years out of spectrum. for example, when president obama was inoculated, people were using their cell phones to communicate and to participate and it crashed the system. these are what's known as one to one kinds of uses of spectrum. there are spectrum hogging devices. broadcast conversely uses of spectrum and have historically provided a one to many kind of distribution of information, politics, entertainment, music, all of those things. the proposal now is so that every american can have wi-fi

broadband is to take spectrum from broadcasting or from the federal government or from some areas that are not fully utilized. broadcasters oppose the surrendering their spectrum because in the digital age were using a more efficiently, but we do have a high-definition signal now that people are really enjoying. we do have multicasting, which will expand. and in the future, broadcasting will provide to your mobile phone your local television station. as i mobile televisions. all of these things will require the use of the spectrum that broadcasters have. in addition to all of that, in making the transition from analog to digital, i was on the commerce committee wednesday appropriated $2 billion to help people get the local boxes, the new antennas, so they can get the digital signal.

i know our industry's been about $15 billion on new equipment to go digital. the american people in the tens of millions went out and bought digital tvs. if they take rotgut spectrum and some of the trials and proposals are to stack tv stations in a way that will ultimately destroy the high-definition broadcast signal, it would take away the multi-channel availability. it would eliminate the future of mobile tv. we just think that in the digital tv shouldn't be sacrificed on the altar of the digital divide. >> host: have you made that case to the fcc because i talk to their top staffer in terms of the scenarios last week and he said the most extreme case was off the table, basically mandatory all taking it back in hd out. is there some middle ground that you can find with the fcc?

>> guest: i mean, we are open to discussing this and looking not at and to utilize the spectrum professionally and nobody uses it more efficiently than broadcast. but i don't know until i see their proposal, i've got a moving target. i don't know what i'm trying to get the ball over or what end zone and trying to avoid. we are not saying no pointedly, we're just able to see the proposal and will try to calculate it. the problem is however that these are not straight-line in the spectrum. it's sort of a pointed quilt of how it's utilized from community to community. and so when you say let's take a back or turn it in, i don't know fully how that translates or whether or not we could share this space because the technology broadcasters use it as not compatible with the digital technology that 121

kinds of devices used. so until i see their proposal, i don't know whether it's technologically feasible. >> host: well, while you're speaking of the fcc, you had a chance on her senate position to know a number of fcc chairs and look at them philosophically. when you look at this fcc, what do you see? >> guest: i've always enjoyed working with the fcc commissioners from both parties and we're certainly willing to work with chairman jenna janowski in the current members. i know them all and they are wonderful and decent people. i see them trying to think for the end figure out how to provide wi-fi universally to everyone and i don't disagree with that objective. what i would disagree with is that it becomes so at this that they simply sacrificed tv for the sake of a mobile phone.

i love my mobile phone, but we all made our tvs for information, entertainment, news, sports, emergency services. it's a pretty important feature in american life and i think it ought to have a bright future and after all the billions that have been spent, i think it would be politically impossible for them to sell on capitol hill a proposal that says, well even though you relied upon the digital transition, nevermind. i don't think that is a proposal that has much promise. >> host: retransmission consent is another issue without a lot of publicity over the holidays, particularly from people. they were to lose their ballgames. can you talk a little bit about it and whether you think there's something broken and needs fixing? >> guest: , well i think what's happening is you're watching the marketplace work. and there have been thousands of retransmission consent arrived at in the marketplace and that's

how it ought to operate. i would simply point out that when you look at cable content, produced for example by time warner, they charge their cable operators one pocket to another, dramatically more than they pay broadcasters for their content. and when you look at what are people watching, well we all have cable as i suspect. most of us get to retransmission on our cable system. we are watching broadcast content and they pay dramatically less for broadcasting content than they do for their own cable content. so if you want to make them equal, that's good for broadcasters. so, you know, ultimately we think the marketplace is working and it's very important for the future of television networks and their affiliates to be able to have retransmission dollars so that they can not good

journalism in their newsroom and provide local content, localism, which provides programming that makes every american community a community. >> host: as a follow-up to that, the fcc launched an inquiry, not an inquiry, initiative into the future of media and journalism. and the chairman said this and i'm quoting, rapid technological change in the media marketplace has created opportunities for terminus innovation. it has also caused financial turmoil on into question whether these media outlets will continue to play their historic role in providing local communities with essential information. is he right? >> guest: yeah, i mean with the very best of intentions, sometimes government regulates and away that has unintended consequences and becomes it. and they had ownership caps and vertical ownership prohibition. and ultimately, i think what people are beginning to realize is the legitimate journalism,

good investigative journalism that costs money. and if you have one dissenter here and another in a radio station and another itv station, they are all suffering with the dispersal of information over so many media, traditional media and new media over the internet and the blogosphere that they are simply failing financially. my point is simply, perhaps we'll do we look at some of this and simply say there are economies of scale, the newspapers, radio and television could enjoy together. that means perhaps some relaxation of ownership rules or allowing some vertical integration and communities. it's just one idea. i'm not necessarily advocating it, but i am saying that that is a better option than the federal government subsidizing newspapers when newspapers are supposed to be the watchdog of government.

>> host: wouldn't you advocate for loosely monopoly good rules are getting rid of the ban on newspaper resolution? >> guest: i think that makes a lot of sense and, you know, some of our members and affiliates don't like some of this and some of them do, but i'm simply pointing out the obvious vector journalism costs money. and if you fractured so much between different outlet that it can't come together to have the necessary finance to produce what we need to have the fifth state of the media watching government to be in the watchdog for the american people, we won't have this vigorous in media as we have in the past. >> host: well, we're talking about content. we've recently had seen another federal trial on indecency standards. from a philosophical perspective, excuse me, indecency overall, what's the right position for this? where we go in as a country with the kind of content we provide.

you keep talking about how dispersed information sources are. >> guest: broadcasting is in a unique place. podcasting is a free service, but most of your viewers don't know whether they're watching a broadcast channel or a cable channel. cable channels are subscription channels and you can get anything you want, any obscenity even that you may seem to the viewer and defense, you can get anything you want on a cable subscription service. when it comes to broadcasting, we have stewardship over the public airwaves. and what the public airwaves, their public responsibilities not to offend local community standards. there are fleeting expletives, things which are set, wardrobe malfunctions, there are technological functions to these pickups in our -- and broadcasting. there's the v. chip.

the 52nd delay. i would suggest that is a better way to manage this band to regulate to the point where broadcasters just are unduly muzzled, but i would point out that we are not pushing obscenity. because under the rules now, if broadcasters wanted to be up seen, they could eat after 10:00 p.m. but you don't see lettermen trying to be up seen orlando. they still appeal to humor, hopefully without the affinity. and that's the indecency rather. and so, broadcasters understand the responsibility at the same point we do value our freedom of speech. >> host: and number of broadcasters want us to go back to the supreme court on the first amendment issues and suggest that it is community standards, but it should be broadcasters in the community,

not broadcasters in the community and the fcc. >> guest: john, i acknowledge that some do want that and some of my friends are for it in some of them are against it. i'm with my friends. how's that for a political answer? the truth is there is a range of feelings within the national association of broadcasters on this. just speaking as a dad, i just assumed there wasn't an obscenity or indecency. obscenity and indecency are different things. >> host: looking at it as a business perspective since all your competitors, the one you have to compete against and be competitive in this multichannel world, c-span and my magazine, our website, cable and satellite can all speak to their community without the fcc they are. doesn't this put you at a competitive disadvantage that you should be trying to level the field? >> guest: it does put us at a competitive disadvantage. i acknowledge that in broadcasters want to produce a

what our constituents, our viewers want to watch. and they have all kinds of options today that are indecent to have seen. and yet again, we have the restraint you need broadcasting to weave a public responsibility. it is a balancing act that we have to engage in and i hope we do it better than not. >> host: movie services are going to be the public spectrum as well. >> guest: yes, they are. and it's going to be a challenge. but ultimately, to make it fair, then everything out to be regulated by the fcc, not just broadcasters. >> host: so can we put you on that? >> guest: i'm just saying to your point about a competitive disadvantage. the playing field isn't level on

the issue of indecency. >> host: do you want to talk briefly about the opportunities specifically that there are for keeping perspective in terms of not only mobile tv and multicasting, particularly i would say? >> guest: i think the future is very bright for all those things. it takes time to bring up these things happen to get the products to market. i was just at the ces show in las vegas, folsom marvelous mobile telephones, tv sets. tomorrow is here and these things will be available to the public in the washington d.c. area. there's probably a dozen, 20 actually channels that you can get on a mobile phone right now. and i think that as we figure out how that expands, they'll be advertising opportunities to make revenue streams to broadcasting, which will be very important in the health of the industry. >> host: all of our cell phones are putting to dtv tuners

in their devices? >> guest: i think it's the chicken and the egg. there are phones being produced that absent, whether they will -- it will take off i think depends on the public awareness of them, the purchase of them. and i think when one does it the others will follow in line for competitive reasons. >> host: we have nine minutes left. on the outside, you refer to 3-d as one of the bright spots on the horizon. i'm wondering since we spending so much time talking about the stresses already whether or not you think all of this sudden emergence of 3-d as the next great thing, is a good thing for us to be promoting and talking about. >> guest: yeah, i do. there will be the nfl has arty announced they're going to anything they said 13 games are going to film in three dimension. and takes a new cameras to do that. but again, at this show that i saw other manufacturers,

panasonic thomas sony, mitsubishi, toshiba, they all had 3-d products. and some were better than others to my view, but they were all dramatic. and for example, we went into the panasonic booth and we saw a football game that had been filmed in 3-d. without the glasses on, it's a tremendous two dimensional high-definition picture. you put the three-dimensional glasses on and you are on the field. i mean, when you see it, you can hardly believe that you can have that kind of entertainment quality right there in front of your tv. but it is coming and "avatar" is certainly an example where the public is saying yeah, we're ready to go 3-d. and so, i suspect that that is a category in the television business and for broadcasters that will grow dramatically.

>> host: does that mean that we're all going to have to go out and buy new tv sets in the next year or two? >> guest: well, i think the manufacturers are hoping so. >> host: let me talk about children's programming because the fcc looking at a wide-ranging review of children's tv rules. and the chairman said, and again this week, that may be educational information programming isn't the place, broadcasting is the place for that because their business model is more about aggregating eyeballs. do you agree with that? >> guest: well, if you have a children's program with somebody in front of the chalkboard, then the kids are going to watch that. so you have to intersperse children's entertainment with children's education and a pretty creative ways that you can sell the advertising. i would point out the multicasting does give networks an opportunity to provide children's programming 24/7.

and they are ion for example does have a program that's 24/7 right now for children. though there are some that are trying to get out of this, so doesn't necessarily need to be regulated but i think it's a real opportunity for us to satisfy a public obligation that we take seriously two children to provide more children's educational programs. >> host: is there a problem in back story to that? there seems to be back story to a lot of what the fcc is talking about the comes to a plaintiff as well, broadband is really the future that may be the tv set is going to become a broadband model because there's that inquiry into whether we change the set tops and to basically broadband or traditional tv model. is there a problem against lobbying against a particularly since broadband now means health and education and government service as? >> guest: i have to say when i

was in the congress, most members of congress, unless you're on one of the house or senate commerce committee, the understanding of what broadband means is fairly surface level. and broadband is sort of a catchall for a cure to every societal ill. it isn't that. ultimately i think what you will see is the new technologies coming along for broadband and broadcast are blended. for example, i'm not pushing particular companies, but there was this product from a company called saysme. like open saysme. they blend broadband anyway that gets you 200 channels, whatever you got on cable, broadcast, and an antenna that frankly cuts the price of cable or satellite dramatically in terms of cost and gives you the clearest picture, which comes from broadcast. the news of her broadcast

spectrum. >> host: you talked earlier about how expensive it was to produce a program. how did the economics work for that? >> guest: there is obviously a company like that is going to pay retransmission fees to cable and to broadcasters. they just simply have by using broadcast part time, which is one too many, they can do it at a price that is dramatically less than laying a cable or shooting at up to the satellite. >> host: said they will be leasing some of the broadcast spectrum to do this? >> guest: gas. and they are all pretty doing it in a number of cities. i know they are in los angeles and they're just been oversubscribed. speak to them to sell theiro program. but i was really impressed. >> host: so maybe the government could adopt the saysme model. >> guest: i would have to understand what the technology

to answer the possibility of that question. >> host: for many years in predator commerce committee, broadcasters and the cable industry where friendly adversaries about policy issues. how does the potential comcast-nbc merger going to change? >> guest: you know, the democratic platform was opposed to media consolidation said the obama administration therefore will look at this proposed merger, but lots of caveats which will not make a discernible difference in how it translates from nbc to its affiliates in relationship to cable. but that's just supposition on my part. i know that the department of justice, the fcc and the ftc are all going to look at this. and what they decide, i can't fully predict. mad is not taken a position for or against it, but rather let's

let the process work among all the parties make their case and enjoy due process of law. >> host: you must express some concern about it? >> guest: many affiliates have come a yes. well, obviously if you own a station in medford, oregon and your nbc affiliate and the potential exists that nbc could simply program around your local station, you could be concerned about that. and so, networks and affiliate meet each other and my assumption is that nbc does continue to care about its local affiliates and ones that local news station to follow or precede its national news program. and i think that that is in the interest of the peacock and that they'll continue working out an arrangement, even if owned by a cable company that will preserve

those essential features of what we think of as localism in broadcasting. >> host: a few minutes left. >> my question is always, what is the question i didn't ask you that she wanted to answer? >> guest: we've been talking tv in the radio side obviously is a great debate. the congress has added many times over whether you pay not just the copyright owner of a song or whether the radio stations have to pay a performer as well. historically, congress has always backed off of that because they said the promotional surveys is the equivalent value of the right to play. and we still feel that way. and frankly if it changes, you're going to compromise the economics and an awful lot of radio in this country and i think that's a mistake. >> host: is your industry satisfied with the hd radio

adoption? >> guest: it can always be faster. >> host: with the impediment? >> guest: getting it into more cars into more cars coming getting people familiar with it. hd radio would be like the different sound quality than fm radio going to a cassette player. it's just brighter, it's clearer, it's a new technology to give the consumer a better radio experience. >> host: studios with the automatic keys. >> guest: is giving a device is more. >> host: thank you for being here this week we appreciate it. >> guest: thank you also hear. ..

>> now a discussion on the bureau of immigration and customs enforcement. we will hear from the head of that agency, john morton plus doris meissner who serves as immigration and customs enforcement commissioner during the clinton administration. the migration policy institute's this 90-minute event. >> good morning. my name is doris meissner and i am very very pleased to welcome such a very large audience to

this kickoff event we are having this morning. it is in it and we are videotaping so i am going to ask you if you could please turn off yourself funds, and let me say in particular that i am glad for a large turnout because we are launching a new series this morning. this is a launch of a series called our leadership visions speaker series and i want to thanked john morton in advance for being willing to be invited here and accepting the invitation to participate with us in this launch. in march, we will have outlaw johndroe it is the director of u.s. citizenship immigration services and that is another of the key positions because what we want to do with the speaker series is give people who have substantial and important immigration portfolios in the

government an opportunity to meet with a public audience here and explain their vision for their agency, particularly as early on in their tenure as possible. so we will get you the invitation on the next run and that will be followed by others as people are confirmed and so forth. the format we are going to use this morning is for me in a moment to turn over this podium to john morton. he is going to make remarks that will be his opportunity to lay out what it is that i.c.e. does and how he sees i.c.e.'s work in relation to his being there and then he is going to join me right where he is now seated on the stage and he and i are going to have a conversation for a bit. i am going to ask him some questions and follow up on some of the things he talks about and perhaps raise some issues on some things he is not able to

touch and then we will open the floor for questions to you in the audience. now, you will have john's by atrophy in front of you and so you know that john has outstanding credentials for the position that he occupies. next to the fbi, you probably also know that i.c.e. and customs enforcement is the second-largest federal law-enforcement agency. it is an investigative agency that has about 20,000 employees, has a budget of about $5.7 billion so we are talking about a very substantial enterprise. john of course has had a career in federal law-enforcement. he has substantial experience and knowledge of the immigration law and policy as well as the overall criminal-justice system. i would have to say that i have known and followed and worked with him throughout that period.

beginning in 1994, the wind he came to the government from the university of virginia school of law, as an agent and his first position was in the office of the general counsel at ins one i was there. there was no question but that john was smart. he was incredibly hard-working. he was capable of handling difficult and sensitive issues, and he advanced very quickly, given those characteristics and interviews, through a varietyf positions and into a variety of positions at the department justice. it has been 16 years since that time, and john has worked and policy positions. he has been a prosecutor with a focus on terrorism and national security. he has held a number of senior positions in the criminal division at this justice department which oversees the work of all united states

attorneys around the country. so, i am not sure that any resumes totally preparers one for the position that he holds, but i am sure that his background is as good as it is going to get in terms of really representing a model combination of experiences and background, so for those kinds of credentials that we would want to see at i.c.e. john definitely has them. as a result, i am most happy to welcome you john and i am going to give you the opportunity now to come forward to talk to us and join me in the chairs. thanks very much. [applause] >> well, good morning. i am jones morton the assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement and i want to welcome you all here and thank you for coming today to

hear me speak. i am very excited to be here and to give you my perspective on i.c.e., its mission and its future. first, a very warm thanks to the migration policy institute for inviting me to come here to address you here today. i am a big believer in a thoughtful policy based analysis and we are all very fortunate to have independent nonpartisan like this one in which we can have a candid exchange and discussion. open, thoughtful, candid policy exchange is one of the great hallmarks of our country and i thank mpi for its work to advance that kind of exchange. a particular note of thanks to doris meissner. i don't think there's anyone in this town more dedicated to the idea that federal immigration policy deserves serious national treatment. that is often a fight but to

doris has been fighting that battle for a long time and it is in my view in fact in issue that deserves great national attention. ker commitment to the issues, notwithstanding all the passion, the politics and the difficult progress over the years, has been on wavering. doris was commissioner for nearly eight years. i have only been the assistant secretary for a little bit better than eight months and i can already tell you i have a profound appreciation for how hard it is to have a job like that and for how much work and effort goes into it so i want to thank doris for her service to the country as commissioner and a steady efforts since that time to promote sound immigration policy in debate. [applause] i want to cover three things with you today. i want to talk a bit about me

and my philosophy, a bit about i.c.e. and what the agency really is and a bit about what i think i.c.e.'s party sought to be. first, who is john morton? well, i was born in another country. i am the proud son of an immigrant. in fact my mother is a lawful permanent resident to this day, 43 years after she came to this country as a young woman and i think it is fairly safe to guess that would never time she has left on this earth, and i hope it is quite a long period she is going to spend it as lawful permanent resident of the united states. my first job was as the peace corps volunteer in africa. my second job was as and ins-- in the few years later i became a federal prosecutor in the department justice and now i find myself running a major law enforcement agency whose job is to investigate criminals and to

enforce the nation's immigration laws. now some of you may think it odd that a peace corps volunteer born in scotland is a federal prosecutor and now the head of i.c.e.. i don't think so. i think that represents at once two of the more important qualities that make our country great. we are a nation of immigrants, a nation whose tradition of immigration is strong, innovative and vibrant and i am a product of that tradition. we are also a nation of laws. loss that are followed, laws that give us integrity and resilience as a nation, laws that allow us to be free and forceful as a people. we have to have them. i take great pride in the work that i.c.e. does as a nation we need the integrity and our customs and immigration systems. we need control over our borders. we need to investigate and

prosecute drug traffickers, counterfeiters, alien smugglers and child-- in sum, we need i.c.e.. ifill fortunate each and every day that i as a career federal employee have the privilege to serve as the assistant secretary for i.c.e.. it carries a great in weighty responsibility with it, a responsibility i take very seriously, it responsibility to lead and support our employees come a responsibility to protect americans from harm, lawlessness , abuse, the responsibility to ensure that the thousands of people we interact with every day, those were rest, those we detain, does we have remez, does the prosecutor, are treated fairly and thoughtfully. let's be frank, it is not an easy job. i will please in displease some

persons, some legislators, some editorial board, some advocacy group each and every day i am in this job. i venture to guess that many of you hear what have me do some things differently. this comes with the territory. i am not an advocate. i am a governor. and with governance comes the delicate duty of balancing competing interests, the law, resources, discretion, common sense all for the greater good. at the end of the day, my basic approach to the job is simple. i tried to make the calls on the merits. i am not a hard partisan. i am just trying to get it right. i am trying to get it right for the government. i am trying to get it right for the country and i am trying to get it right for all people, citizens and immigrants whose lives i.c.e. touches each and every day. alright, what is i.c.e.?

in the public imagination and indeed even within much of government, i.c.e. is thought of as the country's immigration enforcement agency. in fact, i.c.e. is a lot more than that. it is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the federal government with a wider array of criminal and civil powers many of which have nothing to do with immigration. i.c.e. is the second-largest criminal investigative agency in the united states, behind only the fbi. we have nearly 7,000 special agents nationwide, and in 44 countries around the world. in fact, with that size, i.c.e. is larger than dea and larger than 80 of them larger than the secret service. these agents are primarily involved in removing immigrants from the united states. rather, the investigative prosecute criminals regardless of their nationality to engage in transnational crime,

criminals like drug and violence traffickers, money launderers, child pornographers, sex traffickers, it alien smugglers, counterfeiters and intellectual property thieves. the same agents form a critical part of our national security effort. i.c.e. is the second-largest federal contributor to the joint terrorism task force in the country. again, second only to the fbi. were the principle investigators of international arms dealers and routinely break up efforts by foreign governments to illegally obtain sensitive technology and weaponry. i.c.e. does of course play a very significant role in civil immigration enforcement but those duties only account for about half of our personnel. criminal investigation in a national security work account for the other half. in addition our civil immigration duties are shared with customers and border protection and citizenship immigration services.

some of our immigration powers are unique. we are the unique detainer. we are the unique prosecutor in immigration proceedings. many of our powers are not. for example, cbp nci as ol put immigrants in the removal proceedings and as you know by far the largest number of immigration returns are carried out by the united states border patrol. so how then has eyes come to be that defined largely in terms of simple immigration enforcement? i think for several reasons. first, civil immigration enforcement is a national topic eliciting very strong and often conflicting feelings and emotions and the media, on the hill and in the public. too many it is an issue that calls for significant national discussion and reform. few people feel that way about criminal law enforcement. the coverage of i.c.e. in the

major newspapers such as the "new york times" and the "washington post" almost always focuses on our detention and removal efforts. finally something as simple as immigration comes first in our name. it is immigration and customs enforcement, the customs part tends to get lost in that. let me be clear. i.c.e. is and always will be a major player in the civil enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. we are proud of that mission. i don't shy away from it at all. it is basically where i come from, it is my experience. it is my tradition and something i take very seriously. i intend to make sure we are all so appreciated for the significant work we do every day to protect national security and to put criminals of all stripes in jail. alright, my goals and priorities as assistant secretary. in broad terms i have three

goals. i want to protect national security and prevent a terrorist attack on this country. i want to secure the borders and the interior from transnational crime. and i want to pursue a firm, thoughtful immigration enforcement. in the interest of time let me briefly summarize the priorities for each of these so i can spend a little bit more time talking about something, a priority of particular importance to me and that his detention reform. starting with national security. from the moment we were created in 2003, we have had a basic responsibility to protect national security and prevent terrorism. while that is the responsibility that we share with many others in the government, the intelligence community, the fbi, our sister agency said the department's homeland security, is one that we have said to take very seriously so our priorities in this area as we go forward are going to be to continue our

very strong participation and support of the joint terrorism task forces around the country. we already participate in 100 out of 106 and i think it is quite likely will participate in all 106 years shortly. we will continue to prevent the entry of suspected immigrants involved in terrorism of the support of terrorism primarily through our visas security program at overseas embassies and primarily in corrugation the cbp at the ports of entry. we are also going to strengthen our efforts to counter state sponsored attempts to obtain nuclear materials, since of weaponry and sensitive technology outside the laws of the united states. we spend an enormous amount of time doing this now. we are going to redouble our efforts for coder requires very lengthy and sophisticated criminal investigation but at the end of the day it is very important and it is important to the national security. we have to make sure that the

sensitive technology and weaponry we have as a country is only sold and exchange in accordance with the law. as you may have seen, even in the past couple of months we have been hard at work and we have arrested a number of international arms dealers that were up to absolutely no good on behalf of iran and i would like to say that we are runoffs but unfortunately that is not the case. turning to criminal investigation. as i said one of the second-largest investigative agencies in the entire federal government and i intend to see as act as such. while our investigative jurisdiction is quite broad, we have responsibility for well over 400 criminal statutes, our principle responsibility lies in combating transborder crime and that is where we put our emphasis over the next couple of years. within that very broad criminal mandate i want to place a priority in the following.

first, combatting transnational crime and in particular cross-border and organized smuggling of drugs, firearms, people and money. most people probably don't realize this but the single offense we spend the most time investigating and prosecuting isn't an immigration related offense. it is drug trafficking across the border through ports of entry. this effort is critical but not only addresses some of the major criminal fritz we have to our country but also to those of our immediate neighbors, mexico and canada. if we are going to get our relationship with mexico right, if we are going to help mexico achieve all of the potential of has as a country we have to get a better handle on the enormous problem we have on the border with transnational crime. we have 17 border enforcement security task forces along the border, both along the southern border and along the northern

border plus on all of our seaports and you were going to see even more of them in the months and years to come. the exciting thing about these border enforcement security task forces is there not just i.c.e.. we have teamed up in dea, we have teamed up the cbp. we even have representatives from candidate, mexico, colombia. it is a really important and exciting time in law enforcement for is where we are trying to attack these organized groups on a very sustained and aggressive scale. second we are going to spend a lot of time focusing on serious immigration the fences, organized document fraud, a marriage fraud, illegal entry of criminal offenders. we need to keep the system honest and we have to crack down on criminals who seek to return illegally. the truth recidivism is that while not every person who is a criminal comes back to the united states is necessarily going to commit another crime, the statistics are that most of

them well. the law is very clear on trying to prevent that and we are going to spend a lot of time making sure we uphold the law. third, we are going to spend a lot of time on international child exploitation. one of the great ills of our time is the abuse of children by international child pornography rings, sex-- eyes is a leader in these efforts to combat these serious crimes and we will redouble these efforts. we just had a case in los angeles unfortunately, which just shows the degree to which these crimes are occurring, where we investigated three united states citizens in cambodia who were molesting small cambodian children, boys and girls, three men. all three of them had prior felony convictions in the state of california for child molestation is. all three of them had done serious time in the california

penal institutions and thought there erroneously, that they could get on a plane and go to cambodia and recommence where they left off, and fortunately we spent a tremendous amount of time, effort come investigative resources and work with the cambodians. we worked with the number of ngo groups and we were able to make a u.s. case against these three men in cambodia and we brought them back to the united states. we are prosecuting all three of them and they are on their way to jail. i would like to say that those are rare cases. unfortunately there's a lot of that kind of thing going on and we are one to spend a lot of time focusing on it. it is important work. we need to do it. there's no reason why the united states should sit by while our citizens molests somebody else's children. finally we are going to spend a lot of time on intellectual

property that. in the midst of a global recession we have to do more to protect legitimate businesses and workers from international counterfeiting and piracy and we have got to pay particular attention to substandard good and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. that is just a major health and safety issue. i can tell you how many cases for example we have involving counterfeit toothpaste, and the chemicals that are placed within those tubes are not things that you ultimately want to be brushing your teeth with. alright, let's turn to the final area becoming immigration enforcement. my basic approach to immigration enforcement is to enforce the law. that is my job and that is what i intend to do. lester we removed a record 380,000 aliens from the united states. 136,000 were criminals.

i predict a further increase in this fiscal year. the hard reality however is that we do not have as an agency the resources necessary to enforce the law against every single person here illegally in the united states. instead i have to set priorities as assistant secretary within the world of limited budgets that makes good sense and sound public policy. so, with that backdrop, here are the immigration enforcement priorities that i think make good sense and sound public policy. first, the removal of criminal aliens, gang members and threats to national security. our goal is to identify arrest and remove every serious criminal alien from the united states. in the past, this was impossible, largely because we didn't have the resources or presence to be in every jail in the united states. as most of you know we have a

tiered system. there is a federal system, large penitentiaries. then there's an even larger state system or state penitentiary's and finally there's the largest system of all, the local jails and prisons at the county and city level. with the advent of securer communities, and the placement of biometric identification in state and local jails by i.c.e., we have for the first time can surely contemplate removing most criminal aliens as they come through our criminal justice system whether it is that the federal level or the state level and it is a sea change in enforcement and it is going to bring about a sea change in the way we carry out our business. i think you will see a very very sharp increase in the coming years in the number of criminal aliens removed from the united states. a very quick word about securer

communities. the reason it is changing things is because we are identifying it at the front end. using diametric data namely fingerprints, those people who have a criminal record and have some sort of immigration record with the department of homeland security. we require the process to run its course but then we know what we have. and as we enroll and implement this system and literally every single city and county jail in the united states, we are finally going to know the answer to some hard questions that have bedeviled us for a long time, how many criminals really are coming out of our nation's jails, what kind of convictions were they arrested on, what kind of conditions are that ultimately convicted four, what kind of record do they have,

where are they concentrated? all of these things, all of these answers are going to have a profound affect on the way we go about carrying out their business and they are going to have a profound effect on the budget requirements of the agencies in the future. my sense is we are going to identify a very large number of criminal offenders in our criminal justice system that we previously have not reached and we are going to be able to remove. the second priority for us, recent border across this. if we are to maintain basic border control we must arrest and remove those who enter the country illegally at the border or the airports. the third party, keiji dis. whether criminal or noncriminal. if we are going to have a credible immigration system we have to take final orders of removal seriously. we spend over a billion dollars of taxpayer money each and every

year to obtain these orders. we pay for immigration officers. we pay for detention space. we pay-fors i.c.e. trulock attorney speak we pay for justice immigration judges. if we aren't going to enforce those orders at that kind of expense, what is the purpose? we really should all call it a day and go home. the system has to have some basic integrity if we are going to put that kind of effort and time into final orders of removal they have to mean something. the fourth priority, worksite enforcement with the focus on the employer. what is the most significant reason people come to the united states? overwhelmingly is for work. gannett treasonist to join family. if we are going to direct the impulse of wanting to work in the lawful channels we have to create a culture of compliance within the employer community. to do that we are going to use a

to's bronk-- two prong statute, a carrot and stick approach. we are going to have aggressive criminal enforcement against those employers who knowingly violate the law and we are also going to assist the vast majority overwhelming majority of employers who want to comply with the law. and practice means promoting and verifying and it means great lee increasing our ini inspections and the prosecution's. as recently as 2006, i.c.e. collected a grand total of c rove in the way of worksite enforcement, zero. we have over 6 million employers in the united states. zero. this is going to change. i want to spend the rest of the time that i have talking to you about a signature effort for me as assistant secretary and that is detention reform.

there is no more serious effort underway at i.c.e. than this. it is my personal priority and frankly i think it is going to mark my time and tenure as assistant secretary. for the naysayers, the conspiracy theories and the hardened critics, mark my words, this is a sustained, aggressive effort to transform the immigration detention. there is no going back come up period. my foot is in the path. we are going to do this. whether people believe me are not. that there also be no doubt about whether we will detain people. we will. we are going to continue to detain-- detain people frankly on a grand scale. the reality is many of the people that we encounter are dangerous to the community if they are released, or they pose a very serious risk of flight if they are released. they wouldn't show up and honor

their final order of removal if the warrants detained. and the and this is not about whether not we are going to detain people. we are. this is about how we detain them. why do i believe we need to reform? in a nutshell, here is why. weeded teen approximately 32,000 people a day in the united states. that translates to roughly 380,000 people a year. but right now we do it through a sprawling network of contract facilities that are uneven in their design, uneven and the kinds of conditions that they offer, and even in the kinds of medical services that they provide. at times we have had over 300 detention facilities being used at once. that is just entirely too many

facilities to maintain good control and oversight over. moreover, there is a fundamental problem in that most of these facilities were never designed for immigration enforcement. what is their detention power? are detention power is civil in nature. we are not a penal institution. we detain people for purposes of removal. we detain people because if we release them they would pose a danger to somebody or they would run away. it is that simple. we are not incarcerating anybody. so, what do we need to do? i think frankly we need to make something far different than an incremental change. we have to literally overhaul the system and we need to make sure the system we own and operate at fast expense to the taxpayer reflects our basic powers as an agency, that is

civil detention, and reflect the fact that we have an extremely diverse population of people that we detained. there are a lot of people that we detain who have serious criminal records, and they do need to be detained in something that looks a lot like a jail. but we also detain a lot of people who oppose no meaningful risk of danger to the community. they just run away if we release them and those people don't need to be detained in something that looks like or was built to behead penitentiary or a penal institution. we also became far too dependent on contractors. this was in the making for many many years. but we have come to a point where there is not even a single federal employee in the car largest institutions overseeing

the basic detention function, not one. in my view, we went too far. and we need to have a better balance. now, let me be clear. we are going to continue to rely on contractors whether they are in private industry and whether or not they are local or state government. we get a lot of very important services from contractors. contractors are very good at a lot of what they do and many can do it better, faster and more cheaper than the government can. this is really a question of balance in making sure that we have at the end of the day federal employees overseeing the system. what do i mean what i say detention reform in practical terms? i mean a much, much smaller network of dedicated i.c.e.

detention facilities designed specifically for immigration detention purposes. facilities with plenty of telephones, open spaces and the conditions, facilities no more restrictive than needed to keep people safe and secure purchase some of these are going to need to look like jails but some of them want. facilities near transportation hubs for good access for families and legal service providers, facilities marked by professional uniforms medical care. facilities managed by federal employees who were trained, conscientious and feel a moral imperative to treat people well and resolve issues that will rise and issues will arise. we run an enormous system, 380,000 people. people will get sick. people will have issues. people will have mental illnesses. people will die in our custody. that is the nature of running a very very large system but we need to make sure that in that

context we are providing the very best medical care we can with ferry ferry conditions and that we are responsive to those issues that arise. we need facilities managed by federal employees who were there to oversee the actual day to day detention operations. again. we are going to continue to rely on contractors in many instances but i want to have a federal employee who was there and our largest facilities. we need claire transparence standards that are fully implemented and overseen. michael is for our detention system to be basically an open book and for the people that are concerned about how we do our business, that there is a level of transparency, a level of access or they can come in and they can see what it is we are doing. i mean i want that to be the case even for the people that are completely opposed philosophically to the idea that

we detain anybody in the first place. it is just good government. we haven't always operated that way as an agency but i intend to see we do that going forward. getting there is going to take some time. let's be frank. rome wasn't built in the day and this is an enormous effort. it will need to continue long after i am the assistant secretary. it took decades to get this to this point come a decade since it is a big system so we are not going to be able to solve it in the coming weeks but we are going to be able to make tremendous headway in the coming months, in the coming years and we have already done a great amount just in the eight months i have an assistant secretary. let me give you a few highlights. first, we created the office of detention policy. one of the first things i did as assistant secretary so that we had an office whose sole job was to think about getting it right, to make this detention reform

work come to think about how we should be doing things and not just going out and saying we need another 500 beds and finding out where we could contract for 500 more beds but to really think about what it is we are doing, what authorities are we exercising, how should we exercise that authority. we are extremely fortunate in that phyllis colbin, who is here to my left, is running that office and those of you who know phyllis, she is a doer and she gets out there and she just days focused and that is what we need. she has been focused and you are going to see a lot more change in the coming weeks and months. i formed to the advisory groups. one on detention conditions and one on health care. these do advisory groups are to meet directly with the assistant secretary. again the idea is i really want to hear from the many different groups in stakeholders will have an interest in what we do, even

if they disagree with how we do it. good government involves a level of transparency and open and candid exchange. we haven't had it the way we needed in the past. i am intent on seeing it in the future. receipts families of the family facility in texas. we now only house women there. it is an all female facility and we only have one family detention center in the united states. we have reduced the number of facilities that we used by 50 and we are going to continue to reduce the number as we go forward. and reissued the protocol on detainee debts that require us and i.c.e. to investigate every single death in our custody. regardless of whether it is by natural causes or whether there

is some concern of substandard medical care and the like. and we are going to give notice to the inspector general, to congress, to mediacom to the advocacy groups. you will beals iguana web site come see how many people died in their custody, what the circumstances were and what we are doing about it. and then married you-- in the very near future we have exciting things about to happen. one of the things i am particularly excited about is we and the institute, god willing in june, the very first on line detainee locator system so you can take someone's number, someone's name and you can go to our web site and figure out where they are detained and then you can look up the facility, where it is located, with the telephone number is, what the hours of visitation are, how you get there and you will know where the people we detain our. i want to assign regional case managers to detainees with

complex medical cases. in the past we have only typically done this for people who are actually in the house bill. now we want to make sure every person who has a significant medical issue regardless have somebody on top of that following that case. we are in the midst of hiring 50 people whose job it is to go and work in our largest facilities to monitor and oversee our daily detention practices. as i said before, we don't have such a person right now. if you were to go to our largest facilities and ask for the i.c.e. ward and there wouldn't be such a person. we are going to have that kind of person. and we are going to start with a major facility and that is going to quickly get this coverage for those facilities that detain 80% of our population and our goal is to have such a person in

every single facility that we use. we are developing and are going to sinaloa classification system so that when you come into our custody, we classify you not only in terms of your risk of flight or your danger to the community but at the very same time, your medical status so that we can make a determination of front, what kind of facility do you need to be in and not just from the perspective of where you run away and were you hurt somebody but what kind of medical care you need to have. do you have the kind of medical condition that means you need to be detained in a facility that has a particularly sophisticated level of care or is next to a place in the country that has a hospital with that kind of care. we are surely going to issue our very first request to the private sector for the

construction of an i.c.e. detention facility designed for the purpose of the immigration retention. we are going to start filling out and instead of saying please provide as 500 beds or 1,000 beds and the result being that we get 500 access beds and a jail or somebody goes to a jail that is no longer being used in says here are your 500 beds. we are going to go to contractors. we are going to go to state and local jail systems and we are going to say we want fife hundred beds are we want 1,000 beds, but we don't want a jail, we wanted immigration detention center and it needs to have these kinds of qualities. it needs to have these characteristics. it needs to have these kinds of telephones and open air and we don't want any bars. we want this, this and this and indeed some of this kind of medical care.

we have started to have these conversations with industry and listen, i am very pleased to say a number of instances the contractors that we have been working with hef on their own made some improvements to the existing facilities and services they provide. and i think as we go through this process and we start to have more conversation about what it is that we as an agency wants and frankly for the amount of money we are preparing, what we deserve, we are going to see a more sophisticated relationship between us and the people we contract with and a much better results than the kinds of facilities that we use. i am hoping that before i leave, and who knows when that will be, but several years down the road we will have an immigration detention center that the people who are interested in this room can go and look at and it won't be a jail. it will be a building that was

designed solely for the purpose of removing people. finally, detention standards. we are spending a tremendous amount of time on this. i know it is a subject of great concern and controversy. we have been working with the number of the advocacy groups. we are going to make a number of important revisions to our existing standards, so that we address some of the acute issues, namely access issues now. people need to be patient. the problem with the existing standards that we have is that they are based on the american correctional association standards. they are largely coming out of the penal world and that is not where i want to be. i want us to be in an immigration detention.

the truth of the matter is we are going to be operating and using facilities that don't look anything like the facilities that we use right now. and, so we need to have some flexibility in the approach to our standards and we all need to work together so in a few years, we have standards for what i hope is going to be an entirely new world. we are trying to build some flexibility into our existing standards. we are trying to have some minimums but also some target ideals and to do it in a way that is flexible enough that we can work with the various people that the contract with to get there and get there in the context of existing contract. remember all of this is governed by the federal procurement regulations and rules. again, it is going to take some time but just in the short time that we have been working with they have the kids, working with the contractors we have been able to make some pretty

significant changes and i think we are going to be able to continue to do that, and i would encourage all of you to have an interest in this coming to come on down and give us your thoughts. again, it is all about balance and we won't always be able to do every single thing that you want us to do but i think we are a lot better off for the conversation. so, listen, on that note, let me close and just say that we are quite serious about what we are trying to do at i.c.e.. we are quite proud of the work that i.c.e. does as an agency. we are going to spend a lot of time making sure that i.c.e. is better understood and celebrated for what it does. we are going to spend a lot of time making sure that i.c.e. is a little more transparent and open to all the people who have an interest in what we do.

we are going to spend a lot of time trying to make it easier for those people who care about what we do, to come talk to us, to give us their thoughts, give us their ideas. i don't pretend for a minute to think that we have the agency have all the solutions to what are some fairly big challenges, and i would ask everybody here do you know, pursue your interaction with the agency in that regard, keep coming feel free to criticize, feel free to push us heart. just know at the end of the day that it is a balance and we are all motivated by trying to get it right and we are not always going to be heir of-- do everything that everybody wants us to do. in fact there is no way we are going to be able to do it and i will just tell you able story that highlights the challenges of being assistant secretary.

on the very day, i got a letter accusing me of giving away the store on immigration enforcement. i got a letter from a group of concerned advocates accusing me of pushing the bush administration on enforcement, so i think i'm going to frame both of those and have them on either side. government is about balance. and at the end of the day, what has worked for me in my career as a federal employee is just trying to get it right. i don't know any of the way and that is the way i intend to pursue my time as assistant secretary so with that, thank you very much for having me here. i appreciate it and i look forward to answering any questions you or doris has. [applause]

>> very good, john. that certainly is a vision and it is a vision that i think many people would subscribe to and we look forward to seeing if fully implemented. i am reminded in listening to you of just you know an enormous range of things that an agency like this does. so, i have a series of questions across many of the domains that you have talked about but let me start with detention, since that is your signature priority as you have laid out, and because it has been an extremely difficult issue over the years. one of the things that kind of gets lost always in the discussions of immigration and immigration funding is that the amounts of money that have been given by the congress to detentions and removal have grown in percentage terms, even

greater than the amounts of money we have invested as a country on border enforcement and border enforcement of course has been the priority enforcement's interest of the congress, but detention is very, very heavily resourced and it is growing very quickly and it is as you pointed out the largest system than most states run and just one of the activities you have in your agency. so, i think it lot of people really applaud the attention that's you have been willing now to give to this and the priority that you have given to it. that said, it is a long-haul and it is controversial and i know you are running into some of that. let me just ask you about the element of the tension that has to do with who would this that goes into detention in the first place. we know that a lot of things get

tighten up in 1996 and our laws. once somebody is in detention, they pretty much are on a track. it is difficult to change it, but who gets put in detention in the first place is still a choice that gets made, and that is a function of the overall discretion that is in the system and activities that are carried out not only in i.c.e. but other parts of the system. talk to us in little bit about what your thoughts are about getting on the conveyor belts and the first place. >> alright, it is a really interesting sort of topic and a challenge for us and i think it will unfold over the next two or three years as not only be grapple with the reality of who is going into our detention space now and whether that makes sense in two looking at securer communities implemented across the country and we start to

identify an ever-increasing number, a very serious criminal offenders for hum detention as mandatory and if not mandatory, strongly recommended. what is that going to mean for who goes into proceedings, and r detention space. a lot of people go into our detention because we don't have any choice. diva mandates their detention. that is particularly true for criminal offenders and it is also true for several classes of the arriving aliens particularly those being expedited. so we start off everyday with a huge number of people who go into our detention simply because the law says they are going into your detention. where we have discretion i try

to bring as much sort of balance as the law will allow to that. as you may know, we have issued new guidance when it came to the parole of asylum seekers and there, unless it is very obvious the presumption is you are going to be released. we need to give more thought to whether you need, even where we have discretion, and even where you are a risk of flight, whether hard to tension is the only option. and that is where alternatives to detention come in. i can easily envisage a world in which you are in fact a risk of

flight, but your detention is not the only solution to that problem. and rather there is an ankle bracelet or intensive supervision program that can be used for you to make sure that you show up. a few quick issues on alternatives to detention. it is not a panacea and it is not a panacea for a couple of reasons. it does have a fairly good rate of success when you look at making sure people show up for their hearings, but the real test is whether or not people show up for their removal, and i can't be in a situation which i am spending large amounts of government resources, the taxpayer dollars on the program that does not ensure a high rate of success when it comes to actual removal. the other big trick with

alternatives to detention is that only works if you have some form of an expedited docket that is mirrored with it, matched with that. even though alternatives to detention are a lot cheaper than an ankle bracelet, a lot cheaper than detaining you, if the detention docket is such that your case is fully considered, heard and decided in the space of 4260 days, yet if you were on an ankle bracelet you would go on that noncriminal, non-detained docket and it would take two years for your case to be heard, that tortoise catches the hair and surpasses the hair many times over. so for alternatives to detention to be successful it has got to work, it has to actually be a true alternative to detention

and it has to be cost-effective. we are working with the executive office for immigration review on a pilot to see if we can match alternatives to detention with expedited docket and seaware does that leave us, and if we can in fact put you on an ankle bracelet and have you, your case considered and heard in a relatively short period of time compared to the general none detainees docket, will that work and will we save work? if we can, i am all for it. there is no reason-- detention isn't an end in and of itself. detention is there to ensure that you either don't hurt somebody or you up here for your proceedings. i don't think alternatives to detention are particularly useful for people who are a serious risk to others. but for the many people were detained who are risk of flight, if i can assure you will show uy

to do it and i'm happy to consider it. one sort of final thought on this question, and i don't know where we are going to end up, but as i mentioned communities is going to transform i think immigration enforcement because we are going to finally start to answer some questions that we have never been able to answer before. namely how many people are going through our criminal justice system and how many of them are serious offenders and what were their criminal convictions and what kind of record did they have? i think the answer to those questions and we have all known this but we have never had it in hard times, the answer is there are a lot of people going through our criminal justice system for either here unlawfully, have a serious criminal record or are now deportable because of a serious conviction, and the system is

going to have to deal with that reality as we go forward. if uscm astatic leval of bensen-- we have a mandate in our appropriations for 3,400 beds. unless you really increase that level significantly in the coming years, like a very difficult budget times i don't foresee steady, steady increases as we have seen in the past. unless ungreece that space you are going to have to make some trade-offs. you are going to have to make some judgments as to how you are going to find room for all of these serious criminal offenders when you didn't previously identified them and now you are identifying them. you are identifying them right up front in meticulous fashion. the beauty of securer communities is every single person gets their fingerprints

run, sisson come emigrant, it doesn't matter whether you have lied and said i was born in des moines when in fact you were born in paris. we are going to run your fingerprints. ..

site of prison systems the border patrol is the single largest source of hoard detainees. so again going forward we are going to have to reconcile and balance those things. >> let me pick up on the secure points because if you look a secure communities and some of the other criminal alien programs have evolved over the years in i.c.e. it looks from the else like the kid of patchwork. there is a fugitive operations task force, there is to 87 g. you've talked about secure communities and secure communities is a more systematic

kind of approach. should we infer from that or that secure communities is likely to become the overall framework for a criminal alien identification or is there going to continue to be some kind of meeting together of all these other criminal alien initiatives as well? >> first you are right there is a tremendous patchwork of programs and we hit the institutional hearing program that many of the folks for with ims will remember, then there's the criminal alien program that is the larger umbrella, we had to 87 g and the delegation of immigration enforcement authority to a certain state and local actors and noss khator communities -- secure communities. i think that the power of secure communities is such that it will become the dominant form of

criminal identification going forward. but remember secure communities is simply a tool to identify those subject to removal. it is literally an automated fingerprint system where would we do is take advantage of the fact every single person who is arrested in the united states for a criminal offense are brought to the local jail has their fingerprints taken and in the old days a was a paper process. now we come in and give an electronic tablet, you put your fingers on and at the same time that your fingerprints are taken for the same purpose they always were, we then from then immediately against the fbi database and against the dhs the database and in a matter of hours the jailer is a complete

record to the extent it exists in the database of who the person is and we seek criminal history and immigration history, so i think we will see secure communities become the dominant means of identifying those people. there's still the question how do you respond to the edification -- identification and in many instances we want to respond directly as an agency. but there are limitations and resources and that is where programs like 287(g), and where you augment the resources that we have by delegating immigration enforcement power to them on federal employees and the works particularly well in the detention context where they are already detained. we will continue to do the institutional hearing program in federal and state penitentiaries

because it makes sense for people to out in order before they come to us. this gets us slightly into something i think is important for all of last, and that is criminal offenders and makes more sense for the system to encourage them to come to immigration detention with in order already in place. i can't tell you how many criminal defense attorneys come up to me and say your client just wants to go home and now you're going to make my client go through three or four months of continued detention before that is possible because even though he or she has committed, finished their criminal sentence did not to go to immigration detention and spend another three or four months until they can go home. the law recognizes this. there's a provision in the law that allows for a stipulated orders. it's never been particularly encouraged, and so its use is on

easing. i spoke to the sentencing commission, and one of the ideas i offered to the sentencing commission was for the sentencing regime at the federal level to offer some sort of encouragement in the way of reduction of sentence to people who want to stipulate that they are in fact removed and come to trust me with a removed order as the within the institutional hearing programs all we have to do is get the electronic travel so people don't have to spend three or four more months in our custody when either they want to go home or the truth of the matter is the law doesn't allow that for them and that is the case for so many of the criminal offenders that we've received. lots of them have prior orders and all we do is reinstate the order. they are not even eligible for any meaningful relief. >> with shift gears how things are working institutionally

because you point out that i.c.e. has lots of shared authorities, the hand of issues on the coordination as between i.c.e. and cbp, ultimately the justice department with board of immigration and so on are pretty complex and some of them they were difficult to resolve or-board may from time to time when i was all an agency when we have three agencies plus. so were things like i.c.e. having the attorneys that do the cases along with i.c.e. cases, the border as you say in terms of feeding detainee's into the system, employer verification that the cis with employer enforcement at i.c.e.. what kind of coordination mechanisms are taking place? there's been from time to time evidence of right hand, left

hand not being in concert. hell are some of those things? what processes are in place and what things would you still like to see that would improve that kind of efforts to create more seamless this? >> we need greater coordination, no doubt about it. the good news is it is old home week at the department of homeland security and i can't tell you how many people who have been involved in immigration enforcement for a long time now find themselves back at the dhs and involved in making the system work. you are going to hear soon from the head of cis, he was a prosecutor with me. the new ambassador for sex trafficking was a prosecutor with me. the head of alcohol tobacco and firearms was a prosecutor with me in the eastern district of

virginia. so many of the actors i need to deal with on a day-to-day basis are people i know, people i've worked with and people that have real fault and experience. now, that's not a good permanent solution so what we need is a better ability to coordinate our efforts. two things are going on to address this problem. one is the secretary placed a tremendous emphasis on juan dhs that is a greater sense of unity and purpose of eckert within the department of homeland security, and there is much more in the way of a thoughtful, intentional policy coordination that is directed from the mothershed as opposed to just from the individual components.

i want to add to that because i do think there are still many, many things the individual components do the should be coordinated. so i've been thinking about having an immigration sort of coordination council the would be made up of the heads of the three major immigration components plus some of the key actors from the department of homeland security. alley and i have started having lunch together quite regularly and if you will see as the months unfold and the full team gets in place and dhs that those sorts of coordination efforts increase and become more formal. >> okay. i'm going to open up the floor for questions. there are microphones here and we are going to need to use the microphones so if you would like to ask a question why don't you come to the oil and why not and will make it easier.

and if we can i might reserve one question for the end but we will see what goes from the floor so willing going to do is go from one to the others we are fair on each side to read and are you -- we will start with a question in the front and then go to this microphone. >> [inaudible] with [inaudible] >> a few things. we are about to submit a report to congress on alternatives to detention. we have at any given moment funding for about 16 to 17,000

slots which is pretty significant, and we have just consolidated the contracts that we have to manage the alternatives to the detention into one and that has been a help. the pilot program with the department justice should start in about a month, and we will see how it goes. that pilot won't cover all of our spaces. it's just that, it's a pilot. one of the challenges that we face in the immigration system is there are a lot of different actors so even if we fully commit to the alternative detention, if there is a resource problem it affects us quite profoundly so the idea with a pilot is to see can we make this work and if so we need to go back to the attorney general and say we need to expand for alternatives of detention to be truly successful

on a national scale we need to commit additional resources around the country and it just highlights the problem is that eoir faces. you can hire more i.c.e. agents and border patrol agents but if you don't hire more immigration judges you are not going to get to a pretty result. we need more immigration judges to hear the cases. if you were to look at the non-detained dockets that eoir has, that might deportation officers have, you'd be shocked. they go out as far as the eye can see and that is not a good place for us to be. >> who has the microphone -- okay. and tell us who you are. >> [inaudible] on the a 287(g) program isasi

the administration made changes with law enforcement is there thought to getting rid of it all together and making sure that federal officials are in charge of immigration enforcement. it is a statutory provision. congress created the program. it's not within my power to turn it off or on to read it is the law. 287(g) will continue and i did mcginn number of changes to the way we delegated authority and i made a number of changes to the circumstances in which we would delegate the authority what we will continue to delegate and there are many instances in which cooperation with state and local law enforcement make a tremendous amount of sense. and in fairness to the 287(g), is simply a legal provision that

allows for a whole host of cooperation between federal, state, and local actors. 287(g) in the context for gang members who are here unlawfully in on the streets of a given community makes a lot of sense. there are a lot of detectives of the local level who know more about ms 13 in their town and we will ever know and we can partner with the those people to identify individuals and remove them from the streets makes sense. 287(g) makes sense particularly with secure communities only just starting out. 287(g) makes sense and a lot of the very large local and city jails where there are serious criminal offenders being identified on a large scale. they should go home and we don't

have the resources to cover every single city or local jail and we can use help in well-defined circumstances. i don't believe 287(g) is a particularly useful instrument for basic civil immigration enforcement and that's why i did not renew any 287(g) agreement that had that as one of its focus. we need 287(g) to be focused on people that mirror our priorities that are threats to the community and that are serious criminal offenders, gang members, what have you and we also said it looks with the end of the day i.c.e. and only rac knorr three's the actual removal under the 287(g), not the state or local government. >> we have one more question and then i'm going to the

microphone. >> [inaudible] i have a question for you. recently by the national team work was created between dhs and it deals especially with deportations. i would like to know your expectations from the teamwork and the second is about to eps and i would like to extend the question to you. there's been a lot of this question recently on especially this program that was granted for nicaragua and some other nationalities -- it was like ten years ago people discussing what kind of temporary situation is that when the event that actually triggered that program was a solution. i would like to know about that,

please. >> i think the gps is beyond the scope of what we are talking. it doesn't involve rac. if you want to of the conversation about it afterwards we can do so to the first question. >> to the first question we do. my national eckert will sell for or to focus on removal and how we can recognize we have a long-term relationship we will continue to remove a sycophant member of el salvadorans. how can make the relationship the most productive and beneficial one possible. we've had our first meeting in el salvador just this past week. it's going well. i'm way to go down and i think in two months for the fallout, and when you will see is a steady effort to make sure we provide as much information as

we can about the self dorians we return to el salvador, and in the context of removal mechanisms that make the most sense for the two countries and the people involved. >> okay. to the microphone. >> i'm with amnesty international usa triet i had to questions. the first i haven't heard before that i.c.e. had jurisdiction to prosecute 400 colonel violations. but i wondered where does the jurisdiction our life from and also what course our the ic going? >> the customs laws and immigration laws of the united states. we are a marriage of the two powers and that is where the authorities come from and we

prosecute those cases in the united states district court and federal system on the country. >> [inaudible] -- i'm not sure where else they are. >> they are in title viii, title 18 and all of the customs, they, are there, trust me. >> i have another question. [inaudible] mistakes are made. sometimes like you said it's not necessarily i.c.e. putting someone in to removal proceedings. it could be a cbp officer who does that [inaudible] the document to strip some of

their liberty. or someone who's picked up on the street. and i wonder and this is something i've raised as a real concern because mistakes are made [inaudible] it can teach years to litigate those cases. this opening up and focus of people who made [inaudible] what safeguards will be in place to insure those documents to don't have the expertise including complicated that someone is watching what they are doing [inaudible] >> welcome the short version is we are looking. we talk about this need for

coordination and the fact we ultimately are the central prosecuting authority for the entire system including csis and cdp and that is one of the critical roles that the attorney plays the trial attorney has a responsibility to make sure the of original charges that were launched are sufficient and are the right charges and i possess the prosecutorial discretion for the entire system and i intend for the trial attorneys to act accordingly. >> jim? >> i handle removal cases for the courts in the washington area. i see tragic cases all the time, cases perhaps somewhat like your mother where they've been a permanent resident for decades and for example because congress has to find as an aggregated

felony a misdemeanor shop lifting offense for which you get one year suspension in jail and this triggers mandatory attention. the same with someone who's been a permanent resident since the internet as a child and have misdemeanor marijuana conviction for which they got probation. detention on re-entering the united states. so i'm just wondering how we might make your job easier if the department could support fine-tuning immigration laws to not have these kind of consequences where you are detaining and prosecuting people for, excuse me, offenses which have been dealt with as not

serious offenses under the state law. would you encourage the department to support changes in the law in congress? >> its long term permanent time and i think if and when there is a serious effort afoot in the congress to revisit the immigration law we and ground of deportation the would be an area we would want to spend a fair amount of time getting fonts' on. >> i'm going to ask both of these questions and i think we have to finish with that person and this person and then you can answer them together. and i will have to pass. >> mine may not require much of an answer more something for you to look into. michelle verney with the women's refuge commission and i also

share an alternative action team because it is lots of organizations many of whom are in this room and i want to say we have great discourse with phyllis on the reform efforts and i think those are moving ahead and we've been able to have back-and-forth not so much on the alternatives to detention even though there does seem to be movement on the part of the agency it would be great to have more interaction with those of us who've been working on alternative detention issues for a long time and one thing in particular we are concerned because we hear it repeatedly is the cost issue and just one thing to point out and make sure your considering when you're looking at costs is you're not comparing the average length of stay for those in detention with the average length of the case outside of detention without considering the kind of cases. the kind of cases the shorten the average length of stay in detention are those who wouldn't qualify for alternatives any way

and take the stipulated removals' quickly turned around so if you could consider the kind of cases before just averaging in the cost per day but maybe if we get a meeting to talk specifically about alternatives. >> we will take that as a comment and suggestion and go into the last question. >> [inaudible] -- to many people detained within your system. but we have a few cases and i've been here now six years and i'm glad to hear about conditions improved and all that but in certain cases they are not sort of notified to us. we are not mandatory notification country under the vienna convention but still all people must have the right to contact the consular officer and so it happens to learn about the case very fleet and the other thing is it takes a long time to understand now with the lack of

immigration judges but also what we need is a contact point, and it's been very difficult personally for me to find someone to speak to about this case and find out why what is the delay, where is the person. perhaps we will find the person but so we can keep in touch. thank you. >> on the way out talk to def right here in the corner

[inaudible conversations]

mr. president, this weekend there was some discussion and writing in the papers and

elsewhere in journals about the nomination of mr. bernanke the chairman of the federal reserve board for another term at the federal reserve board and the "washington post" had an editorial entitled scapegoat at the fed. i don't normally come to the floor of the senate to respond to the "washington post" editorials but i do want to respond to a portion of this editorial and then in a broadway describe why i think this is an important moment for the senate. scapegoat at the fed. is there many ways to interpret the election results of massachusetts last week -- the editorial begins. it said is but one thing massachusetts did not represent was a mandate to make a national scapegoat out of ben bernanke, the federal reserve board chairman. yet, two democratic senators seeking reelection in november, plus another planning to retire appear to have read it that way. they took the occasion of last

week's political people to announce their opposition to another four year term for mr. bernanke, whose current one expires january 31st. the senator's attempt to burnish their populace credentials by making mr. bernanke the fall guy for all of the sins real and perceived of wall street feels the right, left, and i fed and congress that has already produced troubling attempt to subject the fed to interests of counterproductive of its of its monetary policy. well, that is a partial resuscitation of the editorial. i can convince the editorial by saying the editorial board at the "washington post" has been always the case taken the position that if anybody wants to know anything about what the fed reserve board is doing it is none of their business. it is none of congress's business, the american people's business, stay on with it, keep your nose out of the federal reserve board. that's kind of the position of

the washington post. is not, since the massachusetts election, however, that i have expressed reservations about the federal reserve board. in fact, on six occasions i've given speeches on the floor of the united states senate just since december 10th, 2008, that dave plus on five additional cases liking to the floor to talk about the issues that persuade me to say as i did last week i don't even believe we should vote on mr. bernanke's nomination until he has decided to provide the united states senate and the american people with information that he is now withholding. and let me describe what that is. this is a bloomberg report says the u.s. has not been for a guaranteed $11.6 trillion to bolster the bank's and fight the longest recession in 70 years. i've not come to the floor of the senate critical of the fed

policies by which they have lent, or guaranteed $11.6 trillion. although it is fair to say that $11.6 trillion isn't theirs. that represents the risks of the american people. that is the full faith and credit of this great country of ours. the federal reserve board has taken a number of factions to try to address this economic crisis. the economic crisis i would suggest that has been cost of leased in significant part by the malfeasance of the federal reserve board and its previous chairman and in some respects this chairman who were content to take a long slumber, very long nap while the predatory lending was going on, the housing bubble was growing and a massive amount of bad securities were finding their way through the payment of a lot of generous bonuses and fees, finding their way into the financial

background of a lot of financial and institutions in this country. it says the fed last year began extending credit directed at companies that are not banks for the first time since it was created in 1913. and it has refused to divulge the details about the companies participating in the tenet lending programs. let me say that again. for the first time in the history of this country during this response to the economic crisis the federal reserve board, which previously has only lend money directly to the fdic insured commercial banks -- that is the only group with interests that could come to the fed and get direct money from the fed -- for the first time in the history, the fed said during this crisis we will open that window to allow investment banks to come and get money directly from us. first time in history. so i began coming to the floor

of the united states senate and i didn't come here criticizing the fed at that point because i don't know if what they did was necessary or not. but they did it and i was in critical. we were in an adult crisis and i began coming to the floor of the senate saying all right, now that we have some amount of stability much suck the stakes certain the federal reserve board tells the american people who got the money. we ended up with the money and what were the terms of its being made available to these investment banks? well, the federal court as a result of their request and then a suit the fed had withheld information, the federal court said this, and it was reported in bloomberg the federal reserve must for the first time identify the companies in its emergency lending programs after losing a freedom of information lawsuit. the judge said the central bank improperly withheld agency records and essentially said you have to disclose who got the

money. mr. president, the federal reserve board said, while we are going to appeal the judge's ruling. we don't intend to comply with that. we are going to put it on appeal and get a state. as of the federal reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of $2 trillion of emergency loans from the american taxpayers or troubled assets, the central bank is accepting its collateral. so the federal court says you've got to do it. the appeal the court's ruling and got a stay and they are saying we don't intend to do it. in the meantime, and senator grassley author letter with my colleagues to the federal reserve board last june and said we want you to disclose to the congress and american people who got the money and how much and what were the terms, and we got a letter back from the federal reserve board dated to september september 16th and has a lot of

paragraphs, but you can pretty much summarize it with no. now it is interesting to me the chairman of the federal reserve board has said we believe one of the hallmarks of what we are doing is transparency. well, i don't understand a transparency means you are going to disclose things and if people the opportunity to understand what is happened here, why is there no transparency here, even after a federal court said you improperly withheld records? even after members of the united states senate said make this information available. even after the american people said we deserve to know who got our money. total reserve board said we don't intend to tell you. we don't intend to tell you a thing. so there's a couple trillion dollars out there that the fed has made available. there was a risk to the american taxpayer. $2 trillion is not a small amount. it is a very large amount. and the fed says that it's our business, not yours. that's the business of the

federal reserve board. and we in effect have a right to operate in secret and intend to continue to do that. now my problem with mr. bernanke, especially my problem with him as i said last week, i don't think his nomination should be voted he were on the floor of the united states senate until and unless he discloses to us and the american people the details about this $2 trillion. who got it, what were the terms? we now see some of the investment bank's reporting the largest profits in history. comparing to now provide bonuses we are told of 120 to $140 billion. the car firms by the way that would no longer exist were it not for the federal government. these are firms perched on the edge of a financial cliff, ready to go under except for the guarantee of the federal government in all kind of ways. now of course they are the first

to get well. it's not a company back on main street. it's not a company back in my home town. the first to get well in this economy are the investment bank's. did they did well because they were able to get a couple trillion dollars from the federal reserve board? when we hit zero interest rates? i don't know. and then invest back into the treasury securities and get paid and interest on that where the vehicle were they arbitraging money -- where de -- i don't know. i think we have a right to know. and so, mr. president, the issue here is from my standpoint especially we have a right to know and the chairman of the federal reserve board has the responsibility to tell us and the american people. i noticed last weekend when these writers including editorial writers and others were having an apoplectic seizure rules for this. oh my gosh somebody might vote against mr. bernanke, then they say and you know what?

more than that, more than that being what they call fed bashing -- it is not -- is also the case that this congress is thinking of tightening the rules on financial regulations to prevent those that were doing what they did to create crisis from ever doing it again. shame on them, that is antibusiness. isn't it interesting how this is more often to a situation if we want to shut the gate, close the gate, if we want to create rules that prevent the kind of nonsense that happened from happening again that drove the country into debt, somehow that is antibusiness i don't think so. i think what is antibusiness is this notion of alan greenspan, and let me put up mr. greenspan's quote. alan greenspan who came to congress after the fact, after the collapse and he said well i made a mistake in presuming that the self interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were best

capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms. his point was we don't need to regulate. we don't need to oversee anything. self regulation will work best. they will be fine. leave them alone and they will come home. what an unbelievable, tragic mistake by the chairman of the federal reserve board. i made a mistake in presuming self-interest, self-interest for this cable. it is a suggestion somehow that capitalism works and you don't need any regulatory oversight adel because the free market is left best left to its own devices. the free market is the best allocator of goods and services i know of by far behind a big supporter of the market. i also understand like any other area of competition you need a referee. somebody with a striped shirt that blows the whistle when there is a foul. and there are plenty of falls in

the free market system, so that is why you need a referee. you need regulation. that is in a four-letter word. it's called regulation. effective regulation to make sure that free market system works the way it was supposed to work. there are a whole lot of interests in the free-market system that want to call the arteries of the market and cause some sort of substantial problem in the free markets as long as it exists in their self-interest to do so. so there's plenty of interest and to do it and that is why the regulation is important. i'm not talking over regulation work under regulation. i'm talking about the effect of regulation that is anticipated and which for about eight years took a vacation by the hiring of regulators who actually boasted they were going to be willfully blind. you'll come and do you want to do in the system of ours because we won't look. so, mr. president, i brought once again, and i know is repeating and repeating but here's some of the things nobody

looked at. our own self interests. the biggest mortgage company in the country that helps set up this of prime scandal that by the way than fed itself into the balance sheets of banks, commercial banks and investment banks and caused a massive collapse, about $15 trillion of lost value to the american people. now we all saw this. countrywide, the biggest mortgage bank says in their advertisements to people do you have less than perfect credit? do you have fleet mortgage payments? have you been denied by other lenders? hey, come to us. so you look at them and think how on earth can that be a business model? advertising to say they are you a bad credit risk, we have something for you. we want to do business with you. if you've missed payments, then bankrupt, come and see us. or is a elma credit. here is their advertisement. and all of us have heard these and saw them on television and radio. newspapers and we would think

how does this work? what kind of business model is this. zoom credit suisse credit approval list seconds away. get on the fast track at zoom credit. at the speed of light we will preapproved you for a car loan, home loan, credit card even if your credit is in the tank. zoom credit is like money in the bank. zoom credit specializes in credit repair and that consultation, too. bankruptcy, upslope credit camano credit -- who cares? can you imagine that? an advertisement for a mortgage company saying you've been bankrupt? you have slow credit colin no credit? who cares? and, mr. president, finally millennium mortgage. 12 months no mortgage payment. that's right. we will give you the money to make your first 12 payments. to call the next seven days we will pay it for you. our loan program may reduce your current monthly payment by as

much as 50% and no payments as much as 12 months. we saw these things as they were creating this rot at the bottom of the system from which the house of cards finally collapsed. and by the way all of this put mortgages out there in the country, and the result was those mortgages were then wrapped in securities and those securities were then sold for mortgage companies up to hedge funds and investment banks selling the rest north so they didn't have the risk any more, no underwriting at the bottom because you don't have to underwrite it yourself a risk of head so then we saw this spectacle of very large commercial banks with their financial billy lewd with this rot. cbo's, credit-default swaps, you name it, securities are rated aaa the would be worth it.

then we all stood around scratching our heads wondering how did this happen? on deily double unprecedented greed while a lot of people at the top made massive amounts of money and by the way the guy that ran countrywide got away with about $200 million now under investigation. but a whole lot of them got away with a whole lot of money. and in this country and the american people got stuck with a bill of about $15 trillion in an economy that has been limping ever since. and so, one asks the question is it really said bashing? is it really and i business? fed negative in to say the fed allows people information to of the $2 trillion what were the terms? is it antibusiness for those of us trying to patch together rules and regio this can't happen again. we won't allow it to happen again. i just want to close with one additional quote and this is

from almost ten and a half years ago on the floor of the united states samet when we passed legislation at the request of all of those big financial institutions, the investment banks, you name it they all wanted it. start with the protections the were put in place after the great depression, strip away all that is old fashioned. let's compete better with the japanese and asians and others in commercial finance. one-stop financial service centers create the big holding companies. put it altogether. commercial banking, investment banking, securities in one big tub and put up fire walls and guarantee you will never be hurt and we will be able to better compete. and on the floor of this senate tannin and a half years ago i said this: this bill will inmef future massive taxpayer bailouts. it will fuel the consolidation and mergers in the banking and financial-services industry at the expense of customers and and it certainly did that. and now for those of us to

decide you know what, let's begin to put some of these pieces back together. let's begin to provide some protection for this country's economy. let's get rid of this orgy of speculation, the sunday before agreed to beat -- unbelievable breed of people who were supposed to be regulating but didn't ingest it includes the federal reserve board. and let's do this right. let's put it together and that is an antibusiness, that is pro-business because the business people in this country who go to work in the morning and put the key in the door and opened that door and are going to work every day risking everything they have, they want an economy that is working, not in collapse but an economy that is lifting and providing opportunity. that certainly can happen and doesn't happen when you allow this kind of unbelievable speculation and the transit behavior of the things that happened at the bottom of predatory lending and exotic things like a cbo's and

credit-default swaps, instruments so clever and complicated that those on both ends of them in many cases didn't understand them. i think it was will rogers who once described in a long, long time ago people who bought things will never get from people who never had it and both smiled because both made money. that is the sort of thing going on in this country and that doesn't work. the real economic health and wealth of the country is what we produce, not trading paper and especially not trading paper as a matter of speculation to try to build the walls we saw in the last decade or so. as we've got a lot to do to fix what is wrong. i would say to those that broke to lead wrote "the washington post" editorial a small correction could have -- this is not a revelation since the massachusetts election. this for me has been a long, long time coming to the floor talking about these inherent problems and let me finally say i think as we move from here to the issue of financial reform

aside from the bernanke nomination from here to the issue of the financial reform the question is are we going to do the right or are we going to allow the kind of pressures that have built on the outside to influence what we do. we should know by now, we certainly should know by now that if you are too big to fail and the financial industry then you are too big and we ought to do something about it and we ought to know by now putting together commercial banks that are in short by the taxpayer with investment banks is a recipe for disaster and there is a way to separate them. be our business as we turn to a financial reform in the years ahead. mr. president, i yield the floor.

now, an event with health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius. this is part of a conference on youth homelessness koza by a group called the national network for youth. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> good morning. good morning, everybody. thank you, so much, the key for the nice introduction. but more than that, thank you for your incredible hard work. i know that those of you in the room are celebrating these 35 years of the national network for youth and all the partnership organizations, and i

think that you should be enormously proud of the work that you've done and i want to be the first to acknowledge that i know how challenging the work is day in and day out but particularly in a year like this where the economic downturn actually produces more needs on the service end and all of you are dealing with budgets being slashed and staff being laid off so you have in some ways the worst all worlds and challenging of all times and yet you are hanging in there. i am also pleased to have a chance for a family visit. my sister, allin de ligon is here. she is a board member of one of your terrific programs in cincinnati run by your outgoing chair so i have been getting an in-depth look at some of the organizational functions while she has been here visiting with

me. you know i don't think there is any question that it's important to communities across america but also important to this country that we make sure that the young men and women who your program serves get the support they need to be productive, responsible adults. it's good for them but it's good for america. we can't afford to waste talented youth, so i do want to thank you on behalf of the president and the entire administration because we are committed at the federal level to working with those of you who are doing the heavy lifting on the ground to make sure that every youth has an opportunity to live up to his or her potential to have a safe and laughing home and that is really what your work is all about. before i tell you some of the steps that are under way to achieve that fishing, i also want to follow up on what jane

has said and give you a little update from our perspective on the situation in haiti. i know you're getting sort of 24/7 news coverage about the devastating scene. but the department of health and human services has a responsibility as much of the agencies in a health response, not only here in this country but internationally, and this has been a very challenging effort. but the good news is work on the ground is continuing with not only a variety of foreign governments, dozens of ngos, supporting the government and the people of haiti. this has to be done by the haitians to get both food, water, medical supplies and essentials health and services to people less quickly as possible who need it the most. now we are dealing with a country where one out of two

haitians is under the age of 18. it is a very young nation. so most of the tragedy has fallen on young people and their situation is going to be even more challenging. every day there are more medical staff on the ground, more support staff, more supplies, food and water are not only on the ground, but now being transported throughout the city of port-au-prince, but more importantly now to surrounding areas. hospitals are set up, you know, the u.s.s. comfort has arrived and they are operating full steam ahead. our staff on the ground, we have five medical teams, a couple surgical teams, mortuary teams who were helping to both identify and hold on to remains of victims where matches can be made and thousands of patients have been seen so far.

in the midst of all of this tragedy and all of the sorrow and destruction, our staff has also helped deliver 25 beebee to babies so there is a life goes on among the neighbors and there will be a commitment which we now only to be on the ground for short term but long term because the haitians need that kind of help and support it's not difficult when you watch what has transpired in that country, that very poor country to realize how fortunate we are to live in a country that is more stable and prosperous but while the scale of the crisis may be foreign the specifics are not so for income particularly to those of you in this room. but you know is why licht doesn't get covered 24/7 in this

country, millions of our own citizens go without the medical care they need every year. millions of people are hungry every day in america. mullions sleep on park benches or under railroad or on a cot in a shelter because they have nowhere else to go. of the last group, almost 1.5 million of those homeless americans are kids. it's the best estimate that we have is that about 1.6 million young americans between the ages of 12 to 17 select on the street last year. some of them ran away, some were kicked out by parents. but all of them had to worry about finding a place to sleep to the we know that about half of the school age homeless children have witnessed domestic violence, and we know that the runaway youth are three times more likely to have all kinds of

difficult times from major depression -- [phone ringing] someone is calling it isn't me. the problems they have just get worse. and that is because as you all know helm is not just a place to go at the end of a day but with no roof over your head to protect you from weather, no bed to rest, no shots were for good hygiene, no refrigerator to assure a healthy food or any food at all, no door to keep away predators and most of all, no family or caring adults to help look after these kids. and so it is no surprise that young people who are homeless suffer from everything from lack of sleep to skin infections, malnutrition. recent surveys of runaways in

hollywood find they were 100 times more likely than their peers to trade sex for food and money and protection. the sexual activities and has its own serious consequences. 16 times more likely to be diagnosed with hiv or aids. half of the homeless adolescent girls reported becoming pregnant while they were on the streets. all of those situations you know well. but the challenge is that we need to not let that familiarity become acceptance. these are kids who should be going to sports practices and school dances. they should be thinking about where they might go to college or what kind of job they are going to get, not where they are going to find a safe place to sleep tonight. ..