tv Key Capitol Hill Hearings CSPAN July 15, 2014 9:00pm-11:01pm EDT
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he infrastructure program, siemens, has built 100% american made locomotive and it's going to be operating very soon on the northeast corridor. this is a good thing. this is how we can rebuild the american middle class. this is how we can create jobs, using our infrastructure investments to build jobs in america. it is a fundamental piece of our make it in america strategy, of rebuilding our manufacturing sector where you do have good, solid, middle class jobs, where a family can earn a living without both husband and wife having to work all the time, maybe two or three jobs. we're talking about the american dream, being restored and the infrastructure is a fundamental piece of that. not just because it moves the economy, not just because it's foundational to economic growth, but because it is american middle class jobs.
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it's the hard hats, it's he -- it's the welder putting together the new locomotive. it is the engineer designing the system, it's the accountant, it's the secretary. handling the paperwork. it's america building its future and the president's lay -- the president's laid out a good plan. he said put your ideas on the table -- is there a better way to do it? put your ideas on the table, my colleagues. let's get about done it. this is our future. and it's fully paid for. doesn't increase the deficit. in fact, it will grow the economy and provide us with those middle class jobs. i know, mr. tonko, you have been at this for your entire career. as have i. to be here in congress at this moment when we had an opportunity, we missed it today. we missed the opportunity today to grow the american economy
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and instead we kicked the can down the road. better than nothing, but not good enough. nothing to be proud of. mr. tonko, a few seconds -- i don't know how much time we have. mr. tonko: i believe we probably have five minutes now. look, i think what you point to, the gentleman from california's absolutely right on. it's a ripple effect. it's not just the rail tracks that are developed, the railways that are developed. it's not just the highways and bridges. it's incorporating the rail cars. so now here's a ripple effect. as we've grown the efficientsy of this system, now -- efficiency of this system, now we're building, manufacturing rail cars, putting people to work. alternative fuel vehicles that can enable us to continue in that effort to reduce carbon emission and methane emission. making certain that again we go through this whole process coming out more environmentally sound.
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yes, today's vote was a big disappointment in terms of what we could have accomplished. get-outhat short-term -of this-immediate challenge and let's go forward and there's not that vision. there's not that full in depth plan that is required of us. and and certainly we fell far short of the mark that should have, you know, brought us across the finish line and enabled us to say, hey, we scored really well here. we put together a sound package. you know, this is about putting a strategy together that enables us to advance all of these cutting-edge technologies that enable us to strengthen the manufacturing base of america, where these ripple effects reach us, into our communities. you talk about the locomotives of today and the future that intellectual he
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capacity of workers and researchers in this country. i think back of the industrial heritage of schenectady, new york, that i represent here in the house. you know, the american locomotive company, alco, was producing tremendous cars that enabled us to again have that richness of rail history. well, you know, all through our history there have been those decades and chapters that have inspired us because we met the task. we came ready to deliver. and we were not going to let any force stop us. that's the greatness of america. that is how we achieve. that's how we climbed to our mountains, where people noticed america, where we were that beacon of hope, where the best things came from this nation. are we ready to settle for second best? fifth best? i don't think so. so, let us move forward. other nations are investing in
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their infrastructure. you hear it all the time about rail systems in europe and asia, you hear about the improvements that people have made with, you know, subway systems and the like. we know that we've got the smarts to do it, we've got the intellectual capacity to lead, not only this nation but the world, and as we go forward let's be proud of the fact that we can come together, make things happen and have that long-term strategy which was just not here today for that vote. it was not here today for that vote and i will repeat myself. the republican majority didn't have their votes enough to pass the measure. so, they obviously didn't believe in what they were doing. and it's unfortunate it was the only game in town, it was the only plan placed on the table. we need to do better than this. and we can. so our bright days of tomorrow lie ahead of us only if we're ready to muster up the boldness
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to make it happen. representative garamendi, to you to close. mr. garamendi: it is time to close. we can, we can build america, we can build our infrastructure , the president has laid out a worthy plan, comprehensive and all of the elements of the infrastructure that we must do. it's fully paid for, it's a good starting point, maybe there's a better way of doing it. but we cannot get it done with short-term kick-the-can-down e--- kick-the-can-down-the-road bills like today. but it's better than doing nothing. this is an american future. why did we come here? did we come here just to pass the time or did we come here to really build america? we're going to make it in america. we're americans and we will make it. and i thank you, mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. under the speaker's announced policy of january 3, 2013, the gentleman from texas, mr.
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gohmert, is recognized until 10:00 p.m. eastern standard ime. as the designee of the majority leader. mr. gohmert: thank you, mr. speaker. greatly appreciate that recognition. first of all, i'd like to direct attention to the middle east, to our dear friend and ally israel. and the fact that i pointed out to prime minister netanyahu twice, a few years apart, that going back to the very inception of israel as a nation , more than 3,000 years ago, there's never been a time when
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israel gave away land, trying to buy peace, that that land was not ultimately used as a staging area from which to attack it. it's been true, all those years. the original founding of israel , the promised land, going through the division of israel into two kingdoms, northern and the rn, and then rejuvenation really of that 1940's.n the late no matter which president, no matter which party the president was from, no matter which secretary of state was pushing to get a nobel peace
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prize by trying to bring people together, anyone that pushed and forced israel to give away nd ended up bringing about attacks on israel because they gave away land that should have been israel's. southern lebanon has been the source of so many attacks and kidnappings, intrusions into israel. the gaza strip had so many israeli families living peacefully, greenhouses, methods of taking care of themselves. and in an act, a unilateral act by israel, to attempt to secure , israel gave ay the gaza strip which is
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now governed by hamas, a terrorist organization, that the united states, through this administration, is funding because we're funding the palestinians and they have the relationship now with hamas. so we're taking american tax dollars from many people in the united states who do not believe it's a good idea to curse israel and to supply money to its enemies so israel can be attacked, and yet that money's being taken and given to them and they can say, because money's fungible, well, we're in the actually using the money you give us to attack israel. and they can also claim they're not actually using the money teach give them to hatred in textbooks and all
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kinds of ways, actually, including the naming of holidays after barbarians who have committed attacks on innocent people and killed innocent people. they name holidays after them. they name streets after them. here in the united states we tend to name holidays or streets after people like martin luther king jr., who subscribed to peaceful means of otest, would never encourage killing or attacks to achieve what hamas and the p.l.o. have utilized. sounded -- it's time to cut off the money.
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until they quit teaching hatred , they quit utilizing funds to attack israel, you cut off their funds, you cut off the you got f hatred and a shot at some semblance of peace in the middle east. in the meantime, israel is eing attacked every day, the rockets flying, hoping the palestinians -- the palestinians hoping that maybe they'll kill some innocent israeli people. wouldn't that be great, they're thinking, if we could just kill maybe some children, maybe blow off some legs and arms, what a great accomplishment hamas and the p.l.o. can be thrilled about. of course hamas took over from .he p.l.o. in governing
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no more rea is peaceable and it's time to cut off all american funding to any rea that subscribes to the shooting of rockets to kill on ent people as is going in the middle east, enemies of israel attempting to kill innocent israelis. there was an attempt by israel to enter into an egyptian -brokered ceasefire with hamas. but according to the "jerusalem , that collapsed tuesday when gazzan terrorists continued to fire -- gazan terrorists continued to fire rocket bradges on the south,
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center and north of israel. a fragment from a mortar shell .illed an israeli man, 37 he had come as a civilian volunteer to distribute food to oldiers. it's time to quit aiding and abetting the attacks on our friend israel. it's time to start helping them . and when it comes to the disastrous effort to negotiate , th terrorist leaders in iran they're developing nuclear weapons. they're developing the ability to develop nuclear weapons, because they have their and i ges spinning
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think those who say they want enough nuclear material to produce several nuclear weapons at the same time, they're not just going to do one, they're going to wait until they have enough to do several, so that they can be spread out, be difficult to track and be difficult to stop before they utilize them to destroy israel as the little satan, as they see it, and the united states as the great satan. and it's been described in one of joe rosenberg's novels far too accurately, even though iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear war heads to the united states, the great satan, they call us, they really don't even need those, they could put them
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on cargo ships, a yacht, whatever, and bring them over, have one at new york, have one t chicago, have one up the potomac and they could pretty ell devastate america, economic powerhouse cities, they put one in new orleans, houston ship channel, there goes most of our refined gasoline. it's time for america to wake up. this administration is not adequately protecting us and that's why our attorney general has admitted this month in an , interview that, in effect he is extremely concerned and in fear more now of a terrorist
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attack than he has than he has seen in his time as attorney general. and this is a guy that knows terrorism. he has helped terrorists in his role prior to working for this administration. he's quite familiar with what they're capable of doing. so for him to say that, people ought to take notice. of course, we have our secretary of state kerry, in an article july 15 from "the weekly , ndard", the headline secretary kerry says, i get a little uptight when i hear politicians say how exceptional we are. for heaven forbid that we should realize the capability of
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america and that there is no other nation in the history of fought, has has lost lives of our military, has pent tremendous amounts of our treasury, not to create an empire, but simply to bring liberty and freedom to people we don't even share languages with, we don't share religions so much with. nations haven't done that. america is an exceptional nation and we are losing that exceptional status. so perhaps i'll make our secretary of treasury feel much
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better and be much prouder as i say that under this administration as has been pointed out to me by africans in igeria, by africans in togo, the united states has gotten much weaker in world opinion under thr president. so that should make our secretary of state feel very, very pleased because a member of congress is not claiming to be exceptional. we are, but really, i'm claiming that nigerians and others who were so pleased as they told me you elected your first black president, have grown scared watch this american president get weaker and weaker and far
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less exceptional in the appearance of the world as we once did. one of the problems has been that this country has been under assault, has been under invasion from our southern border. as border patrolmen will attest, he tucson sector of our border had traditionally been where there were more people coming into this country illegally. we have an area in arizona where there is a national park on the american side where the sign has been seen and i have had a icture of it here on the floor during the obama presidency, that simply directs american citizens, warns them not to use this area because there may be
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, drug are criminals activity in the national park. and so american citizens are encouraged to use an area north of the interstate, because this administration has pretty well relegated that area to criminals from outside this country. that would mean that's a failure to adequately provide for our common defense and might be mccarthy's andrew "faithless - title, execution." i feel like the appropriate thing to do is to pass the resolution that i filed a year goesere in this house that
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through explaining how the president has failed to secure our country, has failed to secure our borders. we don't want our borders closed. i certainly don't. immigration is a wonderful thing. there's no country in the world where they have five times our population or less, no country allows a million people or more to come in to their country legally. we do. we love ip gracious. it's a great -- we love immigration. it's a great thing. the latin phrase, out of many, one, has been a part of the great seal since the 17 70's. it's on the ribbon that runs through the beek in the eagle's mouth on one side of the great seal. i was taught growing up that the
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melting pot is one of the many things that has made us so debate. people come here, assimilate, speak the same language, love the same country and become americans. we have seen americans become order of the day in recent years and i so look forward to the day if it ever arrives and i hope it does where we are americans. 2001 when i 2, looked around our courthouse square, hundreds of people there, all races, both organizins.ots of we were all americans. not on 9/12. through the tragedy and the hate
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and the death and the sorrow of 9/12, we saw a nation shine. a compassion nature nation, a caring nation, but also a nation committed that we would not be struck again. and now, i mean right now, our attorney general, under this administration who refused to prosecute what a federal district court said were the named co-conspirators of those convicted of supporting terrorism that was upheld by the u.s. circuit court of appeals, these were front organizations for the muslim brotherhood, that there was evidence to support,
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plenty of evidence to support that they were co-conspirators with the convicted defendants in supporting terrorism. and this administration, this attorney general refused to prosecute them. under this administration, they even got a heads-up from russia, you have a muslim coming back in in tsarnaev who has been to a terrorist area and has been radicalized and russia warned not once, but twice. and this administration that has removed information about radical islam from its training materials in the different departments. i have reviewed some of them they removed and most of it was from the f.b.i. training materials, people have not been allowed to be fully trained and see what radical islam is, were
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nt out to the mosque where tsarnaev went regularly. t to ask questions about has sarnaev talked about " milestones" that osama bin laden credits with having brought him ong the road to trim, to violence. -- to terrorism, to violence. the only reason we had f.b.i. sent out under this administration is for the outreach program. so ignarnt while the outreach program was going on of what was really happening and what had happened at that mosque and who had been radicalized and who had not, that the director of the
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f.b.i. did not even know that the founder of the two muslim mosques there in the boston area al- founded by a man named amoudi who helped the bush and clinton administrations. e was arrested right here at dulls international airport and now doing over 20 years in federal prison for supporting terrorism. he was the founder of the islamic society of boston that founded those mosques. the f.b.i. director didn't even know. they didn't go out there and talk to anybody whether or not tsarnaev had been radicalized and they said we talked to him himself and we talked to his mom
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and she didn't admit he was radicalized, so apparently they thought he was good. and people died and lost limbs in boston. instead, we have seen spying on american citizens to an extent that it's hard to believe we have reached here in america where you have the n.s.a. getting everybody's phone logs of all calls they make, where reported-- this is all .n public medium -- media you have the consumer finance protection bureau that was established to protect us from unscrupulous banks and banking
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habits and practices. that was done when we had a majority of democrats in the house and senate. they set it up that that burro would not have to be responsible to congress at all and could never have oversight. they would get their money from the federal reserve so they could run independently. and what have they done? they have been gathering debit and credit card purchases and use information on americans. some of us think they really want to protect us from unscrupulous banking practices, we ought to wait until we tell them we have been treated unfairly and then go after the criminal. that's what the bill of rights anticipates. you don't go gathering everybody's personal information except on probable cause. you get a warrant.
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but not now. this administration has the cfpb that's gathering information in the name of protecting us. i don't want that kind of protection. i want them to leave us alone and quit drawing and gathering all the personal data on people in america. none of your business, unless there's been a crime. and then, only then, your gathering should be based upon probable cause. . we have the ability of the united states government to oose drones -- to use drones, thermal imaging, all kinds of technology to spy on american citizens like never before. have the ability as this administration has shown to be concerned about an american citizen in yemen who was
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radicalized, who was a terrorist. even though he had met with people in this administration, met with people in prior administrations, had led prayers here on capitol hill of muslim staff members. wouldn't it have been interesting if this administration had decided to capture him during one of his numerous trips into the united states instead of blowing him up in yemen? might have been interesting. find out what he had to say about the people he worked with , in this administration, in the prior administration, on capitol hill. well, how, one might wonder, could an american citizen be radicalized to hate americans so well, you go look at his life, his parents were not
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american citizens, they came into the united states on a visa to college. that's when he was born. and taken back to yemen. in yemen growing up he learned to hate america. how many people has this happened to? we know the muslim brother who was leading egypt and weaponizing the sinai, which is still an area of devastation because of all the weapons , rsi made sure were there morsi's wife had a daughter here in the united states, an american citizen, and obviously he didn't care a whole lot for america.
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so, i had a resolution a year ago that just went through all the whereases explaining that there is no need to pass any bill through the house and senate to secure our border or to do immigration reform until he president actually goes through the effort of securing our borders. he's got the money. some people have already forgotten that secretary of homeland security napolitano just announced one day that even though congress had to priated $4 billion provide a virtual fence in areas that a fence would be difficult, she just decided that was not practical, too expensive, so she would not do a virtual fence and so what
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happened to the $4 billion? what happened to our security? well, we didn't get secured, we didn't get the virtual fence. there was clearly some wasted money in that area. but we still have got to get control of our border. but when you have a president who has not done anything significant to secure our border, but has in fact the unced a new law, , he ls of which are daca just pronounced new law that had not been passed by congress but had simply passed the lips of our president. here's the new law. here's what you can do to get amnesty.
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in e pronounced amnesty what uscis has announced has been over 550,000 cases. our president pronounced an amnesty law into effect that provided amnesty already to over 550,000 people who had come in illegally. "new york times" and others have said just in very recent months we've added an additional 300,000 people come into our country illegally. that week we get the report that 38 people have been deported. ell, if you do the math that means that those 850,000 who had a illegally who
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100% chance of getting to stay here because of this administration not enforcing our law and not enforcing our border, that 100% chance of getting to stay here got dramatically reduced because of this administration's wonderful efforts, it's now been reduced from 100% chance staying here ce of staying an here. nd that's a statistic that should certainly scare anyone who started planning a trip into this country illegally, that their odds of staying here had dropped from 100% clear own to 99.9955%. still come back to the
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resolution i filed a year ago. until the president shows he's going to secure the border, we shouldn't pass anything. as our own speaker has said, you know, we can't trust this president. when the secretary of homeland security can just say, eh, i don't want to spend $4 billion you guys appropriated for a fence, we'll just -- i'm going to do something else. really? i guess you could do that if you're a bit lawless. but if we're going to be a nation of laws, then laws that have been duly passed by congress, signed by other presidents, should be enforced. otherwise we become like the countries that people are fleeing. it was rather emotional saturday night to be down right near the river where children
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and adults were being processed . processed, meaning they have to ask each one of them numerous . estions, normally in spanish and they have to -- there's some articles of clothing they're not allowed to take in the detention area. , were she was asked you glad to leave home, she began to cry. she didn't mention she was so glad to get away from all the violence. she didn't mention that things were so terrible at home she couldn't stand to stay. she looked so forward to coming to america. she cried. she missed her home. she missed her relatives that
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were there. break your heart. one of the most beautiful little girls i've ever seen. it's a wonder she didn't get drawn into sex trafficking, gorgeous little girl. i know beautiful girls. i've had -- my wife and i have had three. and border patrolmen have talked about, it's been , their dead children bodies have been found, one washed up. as this administration continues to lure people into america. and that has now been admitted by this administration, that the president's own amnesty bill that he pronounced into
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law has been luring people up here. secretary of homeland security admitted that. in an op ed that he wrote for spanish language newspapers. it's time to stop luring young children and adults into the united states, into the arms of human traffickers. it's time to stop. of course i mentioned there's one way that we could stop very quickly the massive invasion that's going on, because the ability to stop an invasion ke we're seeing now was even anticipated by our founders and they put it in the third clause of section 10 of article 1 of
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our constitution. that says, no state shall, without the consent of congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power or engage in law unless actually invaded. not by a foreign army, it doesn't say that. not by a military, doesn't say that. just invaded. and there is a great law review article from michigan, a michigan law journal that discusses this provision. it's not been utilized before. there's no cases that we can find that's utilized this. perhaps it's time to use it now. but it says, unless actually
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invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit delay. the attorney general himself has said the threat of another scarier now ack is than it has been. and we know that there is an increased number of what are alled s.i.a.'s, those would be special interest aliens, that come from countries like syria, afghanistan, pakistan, they're coming in from nations where there are leaders who want to destroy us. it's worth trying to make sure we don't have terrorists coming through our southern border,
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because we know there's lots of people coming through that don't get caught. even though, as one of the border patrolmen said here when i was down there, you know, it's interesting, we used to chase them and now they chase us. talking about people coming in illegally. but not all of them chase the border patrol. if someone is paid megabucks to be brought in to the united states, it can be done. while border patrol are spending an hour, an hour and a half processing a massive number of groups coming in, 10, 12, 16, 18, 27, and they're having to process all those, and we have such limited number of border patrolmen, plenty of opportunities to bring in anybody the drug cartels have
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been paid to bring in. with whatever they are bringing. so, we have a resolution that hasn't been filed yet but it says, whereas this provision in the constitution therefore recognized the continued right of individual states to use force in self-defense if, quote, actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay, unquote, whereas an unprecedented organized mass invasion of the united states is occurring along our southern border, whereas before this invasion marine corps general john kelly, commander of the u.s. southern command or south-com, in testimonies before committees in each house of congress, the house armed services committee in february, senate armed services committee in march, warned of the security threats to the united states from criminal networks
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and terrorist organizations penetrating the united states through our southern border and since the invasion he has warned that the situation poses, quote, an exiss tension threat, unquote -- existential threat, unquote. this general that has been overseeing our military in our southern area says that the is a to our country hreat to our very existence. our continued existence is at risk with what's going on at the southern border. this resolution goes on, whereas credible sources have reported plans for an even larger invasion, whereas between june
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of 2012 when the obama administration unilaterally implemented the deferred action for childhood arrivals, daca, through march of 2014, illegal tely 520,000 aliens received deferred action. whereas the department of homeland security secretary johnson admitted that daca was luring people across the border. in an opinion he wrote for spanish language newspapers, whereas a court signed on december 13, 2013 by u.s. district judge for the southern district of texas found as factual, that, quote, the d.h.s. instead of enforcing our border security laws actually assisted the criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal goalsment
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the u.s. court also found that a private citizen doing the exact things the d.h.s. is doing, quote, would and should be prosecuted for this conduct, unquote. additionally, the court found that, quote, the d.h.s. has simply chosen not to enforce the united states border laws and that the d.h.s. is rewarding criminal conduct and that quote, these illegal activities help fund the illegal drug cartels, which are a very real danger for both citizens of this country and for mexico, unquote. whereas the state of texas reported it has identified between october of 2008 and 177, of 2014, a total of 588 unique criminal alien
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defendants booked into texas county jails, think about that, criminal r, 177,588 aliens booked for crimes into texas jails, who were 611,234ble for at least individual criminal charges over their criminal careers. 2,993 homicides. people are being killed in america and specifically, according to these figures, 2,993 that we know of by criminal aliens in this country.
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nd they committed at least 7,695 sexual assaults. you want to talk about a war on women. this administration will not defend the women of america from criminal aliens by the thousands and hundreds of thousands. well, we know thousands and we know people are coming in by the hundreds of thousands illegally. and this administration wants to talk about other people having a war on women when they will not defend the women that are being sexually assaulted by illegal aliens in this country. 7,695as alone, we know of such assaults. whereas the department of homeland security, through the general services administration
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issued a solicitation in january of 2014 proving the falsity of the statements by officials in that department that they had no knowledge that this mass invasion would occur. whereas in 2014 there has occurred a sharp increase in the number of special interest aliens apprehended illegally crossing the united states border being from countries syria, pakistan, afghanistan, somalia. where attorney general holder acknowledged in a news story in july, 2014 that there exists a clear and present danger of imminent terrorist attack from a situation that we can see developing and more frightening than anything i think i have seen as attorney general. whereas the commander of chief
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in the united states appears to be unwilling or unable to exercise his constitutional responsibility to defend this country from imminent danger or invasion. resolved, it's the sense of the house of representatives that all governors of the states along the southern border and other states willing to assist them are urged to exercise the right of self-defense against invasion or imminent danger as will not admit delay as provided in article 1, section 10 of the united states constitution. some would say how would you pay for that? well, how about for one thing, we eliminate the child tax credit for people who are here illegally that are getting back much more, many more thousands dollars than they actually paid in. $100- we are told there is
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billion sent back to their home country and allowing people here to be here illegally, put a 5% tax on that $100 billion going out of this country. we could pay for what we need very quickly. well, we have a bill that's been filed and gotten a lot of acclaim and in the remaining minutes, i would like to look at this bill that my good friend henry john cornyn and cuellar have filed. got a copy of what's being proposed. been sent out to different folks on capitol hill and it does at changingtake a shot of
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the victim trafficking re-authorization act of 2008. it makes a shot at fixing that. how ironic that the champion of ending slavery in all the british empire had this bill named for him that was supposed to help stop sexual trafficking, but as a result of this bill and the president's deferred action -- as a resultns of that bill, countless children have been lured into sexual slavery. cannot even be told a number but we know that it is definitely happening as the dug cartels are paid to -- drug cartels are paid
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to traffic people. they find people who would make attractive skslaves and in an effort to stop sexual trafficking has actually created more. but any way, the first few pages eal with that. and it does say at page four, though, such person may not be placed, talking about unaccompanied children, having been to the border, there is no child that is coming across the border unaccompanied unless they are teenagers, the children even if they are not with a parent and even if the coyote leaves them right before they go into the custody of border patrol, they were accompanied right up
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until that time. but unaccompanied minors under this proposed new bill may not be placed in a nongovernmental sponsor or released from the custody of the united states government until the child is repay try ated unless the child is subject of an order of the immigration and nationality act. goes on, section -- next section asylum nes the term officer, means an immigration officer and puts some pretty hash conditions, including, had substantial experience in adjudicating asylum applications. you couldn't have fair judges
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sent there if they haven't had a tremendous or substantial experience in adjudicating asylum applications. that seems a little unnecessary. but any way, then it sets deadlines, seven days, then 72 hours, shall issue an order, but then it does indicate if it's impracticeable because of an alien incompetency, the attorney general shall prescribe safeguards to protect rights of the alien. the alien shall be given the privilege of being represented at no expense to the government, shall have a reasonable opportunity to look at evidence and cross-examine witnesses and it goes on, page eight, withdrawal of application for admission. in the discretion of the attorney general, the guy that hasn't been enforcing the law as
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it is, who is currently in contempt of congress, who has not talking about fast and furious, at least has been complicit in failing to bring forth evidence and to prosecute people timely including the i.r.s. scandal and now we are going to give him a lot of discretion here. a matter of concern. it says based on the preponderance of the evidence, the judge has to find that the alien is likely to be eligible r any form of relief for removal. basically what it's saying is that in general, an applicant for admission must establish by
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a preponderance of the evidence that the alien is likely to be ligible for any form of relief from removal. if they say there is a good chance we are likely to be eligible, not that we are likely to be eligible, not likely we are going to prevail, but just likely we are going to be eligible, they get to go around that requirement. if an immigration judge determines that the unaccompanied alien child has not met the burden of proof required under the subsection, the judge should order the child removed. be so we've got some rigorous steps in this bill and they are going to be ordered to be removed unless of course if the alien claims an intention to apply for
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asylum or a fear of persecution that lets him sidestep some of those requirements. page 11, if the officer determines credible fear of persecution, the alien shall be held in the custody of the secretary of health and human services. and i thought that was one of the problems that had been created by prior law of giving custody to health and human services. let's leave custody with the people that are dealing with the immigration issue. let's leave it in homeland security. let's don't be transferring people to another department because we have seen what h.h.s. does, they transfer them all over the country and there are consequences there because now we find out that under a h.u.d. requirement, those people may be eligible for housing, which will allow the government to rezone
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your neighborhood. and with that. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman has yielded. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? mr. gohmert: i move that we do now hereby adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopt
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spending for the internal revenue service. >> basically, there is a good seeking aimriters at the irs, prohibiting funding for people targeting first amendment rights. they cut the ultimate irs which is a 340 $1 million decrease from current funding levels, about a 3% decrease. it is $5.1 billion less than the president requested. we have already seen the irs spending levels bundle in previous years. the funding actually increased year-over-year since 2010. it had a lot to do with the current responsibilities. there is a new tax invasion --
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tax evasion law and the federal health care overall -- overhaul. the irs has been really frustrated with the strained resources. in addition to cutting money, riders in hereal saying you cannot use funding to destroy e-mails. >> tell us more about decriminalizing marijuana in washington, d.c. >>. is offered by paris from maryland. he says funding cannot go to any law that either league his eyes as or reduces penalties for possession of marijuana in d.c. democrats have accused republicans of basically being hypocrites on states rights
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there is standard support for states rights, but when it comes to d.c. provisions, democrats have accused republicans of legislating through spending bills. it is not clear with the harris amendment would do once enacted but it did pass. the theelegate for district of columbia spoke on the house floor last week. why is she opposing it? >> she sees it as an abilityment on d.c.'s to govern itself. over an always a fight abortion provision, banning federal funds going toward abortions in d.c. she routinely sees this as congress overstepping its bounds.
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what are some of the other key issues and amendments you will be looking for during the debate. >> the sec gets a funding cut. democrats are opposed to this. cerrado has basically said that republicans are asking for another financial crisis. it would see about a $300 million cut. from president obama's request. . it does continue at current needs morethe fcc money to implement of the dodd-frank regulatory overhaul. there are some provisions woulded in the bill that require new reporting requirements for dodd-frank and loosen some of the derivatives provisions. anything to do with the d.c. is always a flashpoint. abortions, there will be a lot of fireworks on the floor, i'm sure. irs, it doesn't look like
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democrats are protesting the riders on the irs, but they may offer amendments to try to increase the funding. read your stories on cq.com and follow her on twitter. appreciate your time. >> thank you. head offew moments, the the national center for missing and exploited children testifies before congress about his agency's efforts. in a little more than an hour, the economy.on after that, house debate on an $11 billion extension on the highway trust fund. >> we are at the henry a wallace country life center, 50 miles south and west of des moines. home ofthe birthplace henry wallace.
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as unclearch was known henry fondly. of wallace'sunder former magazine. henry c wallace was u.s. secretary of agriculture under woodrow wilson. son was born on this farm in 1988 -- in 1888. he was asked by franklin roosevelt to serve as u.s. secretary of agriculture, which he did for eight years, from 1933 to 1941. to 1945, he was roosevelt's vice president and secretary of agriculture. he is known for the agricultural investment act which was the first time that farmers were asked not to produce. at first, people could not believe the things he was opposing regarding that.
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but then, as prices one up, they started to listen to him. people still refer to him as a genius secretary of agriculture. history andhe literary life of des moines, iowa. >> next, members of a house education subcommittee here from the head of the national center for missing and asked pointed children. john ryan focuses on public-private partnerships, the low -- the role of local law enforcement, and training for parents and teachers. this is a little more than an hour.
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a quorum being present, the said committee on childhood and secondary education will come to order. good morning, everyone. we are pleased to hear today from john ryan, president and chief executive officer for the andonal center for missing exploited children. mr. ryan will give us an important -- an update on the important work in legislative changes enacted last year are enhancing the efforts of this vital organization. , president ronald reagan said, "all americans, especially our youth, should have the right in the opportunity to walk our streets, to play and to grow and to live their lives without being at risk."
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spoken 30 years ago, president reagan's words are true today as they were back then. if we are truly fighting for all people so they can build better lives for themselves and their families, one of the key things we must be doing is everything we can to enhance the safety of their children. no child should be afraid to walk home from school, hang out with friends at the mall or surf the internet. yet sadly, we know that is not the case. too often, a predator is looking in the shadows ready to do harm. each year, thousands of children for missing or fall victim to sexual its quotation and other heinous crimes. as a father of two young boys come i cannot fathom the pain and suffering these families are forced to bear. but we can do something about it. for 30 years coming national public-private partnership has worked to protect children and safely return victims to their families. the organization provides services, resources, and other assistance to families as well
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as those who serve them. the center's what he for our tip of sexualed to leads expectation. on its own, this would constitute a stellar record. but the tip line is only part of a larger effort. manages a also website of missing children and offers training and technical assistance to law enforcement and professionals working in health care and the juvenile justice system. only way to describe the work is heroic. year, it participated in operation cross country eight. this is a weeklong national campaign that led to the arrest
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of 281 child traffickers and the rescue of 168 children, besting its work from the prior year. however, we all know that, despite these achievements, more work needs to be done. to help support that effort, the year, congress passed missing children reauthorization act. corporation with them. the law includes reforms to encourage greater coordination between law enforcement, states, and schools. congress cannot stop there. there is more that can and should be done on the half of youth. of vulnerable while no legislation can provide a perfect solution, the bills put forward last week will move our country in the right direction. protecting children has been and
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must remain a national priority. mr. ryan, i would like to thank you and your staff for yours and their hard work and dedication. congress, and, nation, let's continue working together so we can turn the tide on these hateful crimes. with that, i will recognize the , david loebrat suck, for his opening remarks. thank the chairman for convening this hearing. and i thank mr. ryan for joining us today. father and grandfather, i, too, can only imagine the terror experienced by the parents of a missing child. parents in the midst of this trauma need the support of law enforcement, schools and other programs designed to locate and recover dissing and exploited children.
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since its creation in 1984, through the missing children's assistance act, this private, nonprofit organization has guided assistance come out three chance of her to missing and exploited children and their families. it is tasked with correlating efforts to recover reunite missing children with their families and efforts to reduce child sexual expectation. the center works with law enforcement to rapidly respond to the approximately 10,000 to 13,000 children reports they receive each year. it is also a partner in the amber alert program, the nation's child abduction alert system. named for amber hagerman, a nine-year-old objected and killed -- abducted and killed in texas. a 692this make him children have been successfully
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recovered as a result of amber alert. just last week, three missing girls in iowa were recovered due to a swiftly dispatch amber alert. it provides guidance to community partners on how to effectively locate and identify missing children and operates a tip line or reporting missing children. years, it has seen its workload of sexual expectation of children increased are medically unfortunately. the number of complaints of child sex trafficking increased 1000% from 2004 to 2008. additionally, the internet has increased the risk of youth exploitation and internet crimes against children and child pornography cases continue to rise. last november, congress reauthorize the children's assistance act.
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of the most important provisions of this reauthorization was the addition of a requirement that it coordinate with the interagency council on homelessness in order to address the high number of homeless youth who are victims of sex trafficking. runaway and homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and trafficking. last year, one in seven endangered when a ways -- runaways were living -- were likely sex trafficking victims. many of these youth were in care of social services or foster and mayn they ran away have experienced sexual abuse before they left their homes. these children are at an increased risk of falling victim to sex exploitation or engaging to gain food or money. i recognize there are still --
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there are still more we must do to prevent children from becoming victims in the first place. more than 10,000 kids still go missing each year and scores of children are forced into sexual exploitation and trafficking. to hearing on what federal support to believe needs to be to change this. that --portant to note nine this law complements the missing children's assistance by providing targeted assistance to homeless youth through initiatives like the basic center program that provides youth with emergency shelter, food, and medical care. we can lower the risk of exploited children. as we move forward, it is critical that would provide them with the resources to carry out its minutes -- its mission with
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adequate funding. as we can see, we have a lot of challenges ahead of us and i look over to hearing from you, mr. ryan, about how we can address this. >> all members will be permitted to submit written statements to be included in the permanent hearing record your the record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be submitted for the official record. it is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished witness. mr. ryan is the executive officer for the center of missing and explain to children here in washington, d.c. briefly explain the lighting system. you will have five minutes to summarize your written testimony. when you begin, the light will be green. when there's one at left, the left will be yellow.
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make sure you are finished up by the red light. that is more of a reminder for us up here. after you are done, i will recognize members who will each have five minutes to ask their questions. out of deference to my colleagues, i will offer to take my rationing last so we can get theirs in first and accommodate the schedules. with that, you're recognized for five minutes. >> think you mr. chairman and established members of the committee. as you know, the national center is a nonprofit organization designated by congress to work in partnership with the justice department and funded by public and private sectors. unique public-private
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partnership. we commemorate 30 years of operation during which [indiscernible] assisted law enforcement in the recovery of more than 160,000 is children, coordinated the secondary distribution of amber alert leading to the recovery of 695 abducted shogren and provided -- abducted children and provided emotional support to affected families. we process more than 2.6 million to one reports of suspected child actual expectation and reviewed more than 115 million
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images and videos of parent-child or pay to assist law enforcement in identifying the victimized children. to date, nearly 6000 children have been identified through clues gleaned from these images. the national center has done a lot to make our children safer, but this organization is needed more now than ever. the world is a different place than it was 30 years ago. the internet has transformed life in many positive ways but it has also fostered an explosion of child pornography, literally of violent sexual assaults against children that are traded amongst defenders from all walks of life. the internet has inspired new like onlinenames enticement and sextortion. and it has become a marketplace for selling children for sex. many children today have cell phones which function the same
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as computers. this is why it is vital that we work more closely with our nations schools to help educate them about the dangers of the internet in the real world. recent of our reauthorization, you gave us the authority to provide more resources to state and local educational agencies. we have started to use this new authority to expand our programs to protect more children. among our expanded initiatives are new prevention curriculums, such as art kid smarts prevention program which provides lesson plans and teaching tools set to launch this summer in time for the new school year. we are working to develop more age-specific online curriculum and related educational resources for teachers to download from our website to use directly in their classrooms. two i became president years ago, i was appalled at the
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number of children being openly sold for sex on websites like back page. technology has changed the playing field. a customer can shop online from the privacy of a home or hotel room and a child will be delivered to their door. as part of our work to combat child sex trafficking, we assisted the fbi with operation cross country. that was headquarters at our center and led to the recovery of 168 children over three days and the arrest of 281 pence and predators -- pimps and predators. one mother took the initiative, looked up the back page, saw the phone number advertised, called the national center. we will able -- we were able to track the phone number to three date -- three states. that girl was recovered during
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operation cross country. with respect to those children missing from foster care, there are current laws before congress now that weird congress to pass. right now, only two states have laws mandating the reporting of children missing from foster care. as has been pointed out, when in seven missing children are also being sexually exploited. 67% of those are coming from foster care children. no one is looking for these children. they cannot be found until they are looked for. i want to first thank this committee for focusing your efforts and giving us the ability to work more closely with schools, with teachers, with communities, especially those children with special needs. according to the cdc, suffer from autism. more children go wandering than 50% of the time. wandering is not the right term.
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they are bolting. they are bolting to unsafe environments, such as bodies of water. we set up new protocols for first responders because the behavioral characteristics are quite different for these children. parents need to be educated. first responders need to be educated. and we believe schools will play an important role in the prevention and awareness of this new phenomenon. it has reached epidemic proportions. with that, chairman, i have devoted more time for q&a because i think that is more important to focus on what is happening now and how we think we can partner further with this committee. i want to thank you for the reauthorization and the ability to meet these emerging challenges. >> i thank mr. ryan. as i said earlier, i will defer my questions to the end.
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the chairman of the full committee is now recognized for five minutes. mr. klein. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you mr. rhine for being here. ryan, a -- thank you, mr. for being here. does amazing and almost unimaginable -- unmanageably difficult and challenging work so we thank you for that. i am looking at a couple of things here. provided byably your office, a nice little chart talking about the national center's statistics from minnesota. looking at the statistics from the, in minnesota alone, center worked on 6199 endangered runaways. from injured or
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otherwise missing and so forth. not is in one state and that big a state where you are working all the time and doing, as i said, unimaginably challenging and difficult work. it's aching of minnesota, in minneapolis, we have a company they're called like touch h.light -- light touc you have arranged to work with them to the blonde forstmann and the media. to work with law enforcement and the media. how did that come about? >> they are the largest national school photographers and they are now global as they grow. they stepped up on a voluntary basis and offered to take free photographs for families of their children that families could use and with the assistance of life touch to form
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what they call a smile safe id card that families can hold. it has all of the relevant information and a photograph of their child. with the parents permission, they digitize that photo and information. so when law enforcement is called upon to find a missing child and we get that notice, the first thing we do is see if we have that photo and information on file. invariably, we do now because of life touch. program, we found missing children in over 20 states because their child's photo was in life touch's digitized inventory. >> thank you. again, another example of great innovation and progress. you are one of those agencies that -- where everybody is busy all the time, coming up with new ideas and new approaches because you are on a mission. it is reassuring to know that you are there and that you have
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the relationships that you have with law enforcement. and theioned autism increasing numbers of children with autism and the things that you are doing. bit andexpand a little tell me how this is different and how you have developed partnerships to make this work? it has got to be fairly challenging. >> it is. we learned from the first responder community that the characteristics of a typical search for a missing child were not applying in certain cases. in the common in desk, denominator, they found these children suffer from one of the symptoms of autism. these children are attracted to high risk environments. when we use the term water, that dealingom discussion
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with the elderly, when they go off. it is typically a benign situation. but these children are literally bolting in the blink of an eye and they are attracted to bodies of water, to high-density traffic areas. within seconds, they can be thrust into these environments despite the best care of parents, despite the best response of the first responder community. that it isrned critical to educate the parents in terms of what measures they can take to safeguard this child, both within their home and within the schools. because these children are bolting from schools. we saw that in new york city last year. literally bolted from the classroom and went right into the east river. know whated to measures they can take to prevent a child like that from , egress fromccess
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that school. who should be notified when these incidents occur? we are focusing a lot of our attention and partnering with organizations like autism speaks, in a psa campaign to educate the community at large. the awareness level is not where it should be. the public will turn out to be the eyes and ears and first responders to this problem. but they need to know what to look for and how they should respond. >> i see my time has expired. >> the ranking member is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. mr. ryan, thanks for being here again. i appreciate this and the wonderful work you folks are doing. i want to talk more about the reauthorized child assistance act, how it is working and what more you need from us.
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i like to say that we are in a highly constrained environment here in washington, d.c. i think we can all agree to that. is there more that you can do? if there were more funding, is there more that you could do or are you at a point where you recognize the reality that funding is in short supply and the chances of maybe getting more is not so great at this point? what is your sense of that? >> one thing is to do more with less. for instance, in the area of designing educational curriculums, we have our own in-house studio. we create the content that we use. we don't have to use third-party vendors. i can be expensive. we leverage our partnerships with various companies. they service the distribution platforms. where we need to be further engaged is getting in front of the schools on a nationwide
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byis, not on a community community or even state-by-state, but on a nationwide approach because we have the age-appropriate messaging. it is not a one-size-fits-all. and we can track these kids from kindergarten through high school. the nature of the problem is different. because we are the clearing house, we know the trends and patterns. we have the ability to design preventive messages. you have the ability to create the format, whether it be games or lesson plans. i think the committee is uniquely his mission to help us partner with the educational community to push this message out. >> the idea of a proto-public partnership, we are moving that way all the time given the limited resources we have at the adult level, whether it is on transportation or any number of other things. this is an area where that clearly seems to be working well. i would be interested in finding
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out from you if you can provide atsome information, arriving some point how it is you judge how you are doing your job. if i could get that from you in writing, we would all appreciate that. i have no doubt you are doing a great job. you are doing your job and about as effectively as you possibly can. can you elaborate a little bit more on the educational aspect of this? you mentioned a number of things you're doing with schools. there may be more things that you would like to do with schools, with public schools and private schools for that matter. can you elaborate on that a little bit? >> where we think we can make a difference is training the trainers. in this case, the trainers would be the teachers. we know they are in position to be an early alert system. we learned here, close to where overe now, fairfax county,
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three years, there was a major operation where gangs were recruiting high school students from the schools and trafficking them commercially through neighborhood and community hotels. these children were going home at night, going to school for the most part, but no one was picking up on the signs. so we learned from that. we work with law enforcement. we then have the conversation with the teachers -- what did you see was different? performance? coming in late? maybe bruises? coming in well-dressed? flashy jewelry? if teachers are made aware of what to look for, they can intervene at an early stage and pass that on. >> in iowa, my wife taught second grade for a long time. teachers are in a situation, as you just said, where they are on the front lines.
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school counselors, school nurses, a lot of them are critical. >> if we can continue to do that across the country, it makes sense. thank you some much. i will yield the rest of my time. >> the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from tennessee is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first of all, thank you for what you do every day. with our human trafficking bills that the congress passed in a bipartisan way just a few weeks ago, it really helped educate me about the enormity of this problem. i had no idea it was as large as it was and i look at this graph that you have on your cyber tip line. 1998 or 2000, now there is an astronomical increase. what is the reason for that? is it because of better awareness? i can tell you, i was clueless about how in armistice problem
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is and how subtle it can be in a school. if you are not paying attention or you do not know what to pay attention to, someone can be in front of you carrying on an apparently normal life and they are not carrying on a normal life. >> one of the trickle factors that has cost the increase is the online classified ad platforms on the internet, the back pages of the world. this has provided a relatively inexpensive business model for pimps and predators to advertise sex. clients, minors for they modest investment, are trafficking these children around the country, usually under the radar of local law enforcement because they are moving them from community to community, state to state. these are children from all walks of life.
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the majority of them start off as endangered runaways. but some of them come from stable households. they are applying for jobs that they think may be modeling or something in the entertainment business and they are leeward -- lured by these creditors and then taken across the country. it is in everybody's backyard. if people are not aware of it, they are not looking for it. >> i didn't even know what that page was three or four months ago. how do you go after those? we passed wasls to go after the people who advertise. it is cheap, as you said, to put up a web page. >> there are no regulations that they fall under. unlike the responsible electronic service providers who have a legitimate business model, they choose not to know who their customer is. they turn a blind eye. if they see something that may look like potentially child pornography, they may make a
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preliminary report that they are not searching their systems. so they see a phone number associated with potentially illicit activity, well, searcher system. that is not an isolated occurrence. that child associated with that number has honorably popped up in all tuples states as we saw in operation cross country. so they are doing the bare minimum. >> a wink and a nod. >> exactly. >> one of the things we did in the bill is extremely important, which is to take the victims, not make them criminals but make them victims so they can turn themselves in and not be prosecuted. would go to jail because i engaged in something illegal. . think that was a huge issue they are victims of these crimes. >> you are 100% right, sir. when they are treated like reportedthey were not
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because they felt that law enforcement was not a potential ally, but a potential threat. the gaps still exist when these miners are recovered. where did they go. where are they placed? if they are not in the criminal justice system now, which is good, there is no hold on them. we do not want them to go back into the dangerous environment. hours is critical to get them into therapeutic care that they need. i think this committee is well situated to identify those resources and agencies that we can partner with. >> there is a real shortage, as i understand it. i'd like you to talk about the missing from foster care. that is amazing to me that only two states have any requirement. if a child walks away from childcare, nobody would know that. what should states do to alleviate that? >> fortunately, there is
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legislation in front of this congress with bipartisan support that would require social services agencies, foster care facilities to report every instance of a child going missing to law enforcement and then onto the national center. thatow that the two states currently do that, florida and illinois, we received 4000 reports over the last year. we can intervene at an early stage. we can find out that they frequently run away. we know where they are likely to go, who they are with. when law enforcement gets that information, they can intercept them before they are exploited. do.hank you for what you you are making a difference in this country. >> i now introduce a legislator who is a dear friend to everyone on this committee, the gentlelady from new york for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just listening to you, reading
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your testimony, a few things bother me, especially on the foster children and also the children that are in the schools. my sister is a school nurse. she does report on awful lot of things to social services. if it is not a high-level case, they can't take it and they just let it go. this is one of the biggest complaints that i hear from her when she knows something is going on. of course, the child does not open up. so i think that is something that we really need to look at because you are talking about social workers, which we do not have enough of them. we don't have enough school nurses. everybody does go to her, the children. you wear that white uniform, that is safe. so i don't know how we are going to solve that problem. but the children with disabilities, you know, i'm sitting here -- they've already
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got two strikes against them, especially those that have a hard time communicating. and that is good to be a real problem. that is a real problem. that some people my age come a little bit older, caseof us have pendants in you fall with a gps so they can respond. i don't know about privacy laws, but for children who cannot communicate well, would something like a watch help them to recover? >> absolutely. there is a voluntary process where the family decides to implement that device. a candy something in their school bag so it is not visible so it is not something that will cause any alarm or undue discussions. districts, they
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have signed on to support that. the device will only be triggered when a family member activates it. they goes readily to the police agency. we had a case in montgomery county where the child of one of the autism speaks executives, their young boy traveled to school back and forth on a school bus. inadvertently, was put on the wrong school bus, was lost in the system for many hours, which is a nightmare for a child. that child had the device and the school bag. they called montgomery county and it was activated. they located the child within 15 minutes of activation. >> the programs you will be doing in the schools, are you also reaching out to the pta so that parents are also educated? one of the things we found, especially with trying to educate parents on they should know what their children are looking on on the internet, there are so many good programs out there but we are finding a lot of parents don't take advantage of that.
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>> you are right, congresswoman. we provide -- our website is our principal resource for parents and the community. but if they don't know about us, they will not go to us. so we have to do a better job of getting out to the communities, raising awareness of what services and resources we can provide all of them for free. again, that is why the schools are the nexus because the parents are connected to the schools for a range of services and guidance. our foot in the door there, we can do a better job dealing more directly with the parents. >> have you been doing a lot of work with some of the social workers, especially for those children that are placed into a foster home? you hear and read about some cases where these children are put into these foster homes and are there for a number of years, but the turnover or the runaways
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are extremely high. the social workers are really the key to make sure -- to see this abuses going on. but many times the child is petrified the pending on the age. by the time they become a teenager, they both. -- they bolt. >> that's right. in connection with the two states that are reporting, we have made outreach efforts to service agencies and law enforcement agencies to form partnerships and protocols of reporting. we have had some success in the number of states where, again, social service workers are the key. they are the ones outside the classroom that have the most contact with these children. if they are not getting information from a child, if they know something is wrong --
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they know something is wrong and they are not being told that. the center may be able to provide additional information, what could be happening. then we form that link that kind of closes that gap. you have social services, law enforcement, the national center. ismay know where that child going from because, with the dialogue with social workers, is that child ever -- does that child have a phone? what is the phone number? we have all the social media platforms and databases. like the mother did with the 16-year-old. she looked for her phone number on back page. we may see where that services. story, but weood can tack on that information so that we can have prevention before expectation -- before exploitation. >> thank you for being here for one of our most crucial
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missions, keeping our children safe. i really appreciate your work. i was pleased to learn of your initiative safe to compete, which raises awareness of child sexual abuse and provides training opportunities. i'm sure there is a set of test practices for keeping our children -- of best practices for keeping our children safe when participating in a sport. result of that safe to compete conference where we drew together most of the nations entities ands mental health professionals as well as community leaders, they signed onto what you have referred to as best practices, which include the critical stage when an organization is taking on either a volunteer or a paid staff member who will have close
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contact with these children. many of these organizations have overnight, weekend stays, and even a week to a month stays. children need to know who they are interesting and children over to, who is literally going to be responsible for their children. these organizations now are doing background checks. they are doing criminal history checks. they are able to detect red flags before they turn over the care and custody of these children to whether it be volunteers or staff members. more needs to be done and i think that is where congress can help. we need a nationwide uniform program of background checks. the larger organizations can afford it. they can pass that on through dues or other grants that they get. but the small local community-based, and there are thousands of them, they cannot. we need to supplement their ability to do the same background checks.
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it is equally as important because there is a gap and predators find the gaps. they are not going to go to an organization where they know they will be vetted and checked out. they will go to a smaller organization. as long as they have kids, that is all they need. if they are not going to be properly vetted, then they get in the front or and that is where the problems are. a nationwide, uniform approach of background checks. fingerprints have proven to be the most reliable and competence of. there is a cost associated with that but there is a way to spread that cost around. as a result of safe to compete, lexis-nexis have helped to fund that and they offer a discount rate to community organizations to provide those necessary checks to ensure the cost was not a prohibiting factor. we are prepared to work with congress.
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we can identify some of these corporate partners who can help defray some of these costs. but it needs to be done. >> very good. i want to switch gears. i want to zero in on your net smart workshop. can you talk a little more about this program and how will the new initiative differ from your main education program? >> we are expanding. started out as a web-based platform where we provided access to teachers and educators to come to our website , download the resources, and then utilize them in their school. because we have grown -- as i mentioned, we have our own in-house studio now. some of them get a little carried away and think they are disney animators. but they created characters and formats, again, that are age-appropriate.
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you don't want to scare kids at the age of five. but some of these kids have access to ipads. so you can't neglect of them and say we will wait until they get a little older. you have to approach them and address them as soon as they are starting to access these devices. yet the same message, the same cartoons -- a high school student is going to say, obviously, not for me. but they are still vulnerable. , sextortion, those are targeting tweens. those are the ones who are more adept at utilizing the technology, more solar -- more so than i, but they do not know the real world problems that are being facilitated through those devices. again, we don't have the ability to target these messages. we have the platform now. but we still need that entrée.
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i think we need a committee like this and other partners to get into this discussion because it's free. at the end of the day, it's free. this kid smarts program is totally paid for by honeywell. not a dime of taxpayer funds. and they are committed. if this is successful, as we hope it is, they will not just say it is a one-time release. they will stand behind it. and other partners will step up. we have been in touch with the rotary association. i didn't realize how strong they are, 1.2 billion members. they are all the stakeholders we hope to deal with, business leaders, educators, political leaders, the schools. they are adopting out some of our challenges. childre about to take on sex trafficking as their next national campaign after polio. touchs huge because they
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all the important sectors that we need to touch that we couldn't do without support like that. again, we support the partnership with this committee because you have the same charter. with our subject matter expertise in this area, we will work well together. >> the gentlelady from ohio is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. ryan, for being here today. i represented the 11th district of ohio where national news was made last year when we found three young women who had been held in a home for more than 10 years. we also found that there was a great amount of change needed with the powered police department because their practices in some ways made the problem worse as it relates to how we search for and find missing, exploited children.
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how much work do you do with local police departments to prepare them to look for these young people? >> we actually work very closely with that community. we have ongoing training. we called it the ceo training force. we bring in national law enforcement leaders to the national center. usually, a class sizes 50 to 75. it is train the trainers. we train them and expose them to the resources the national center cap provide. when they go back to their agencies, they can be our ambassadors. what we called a long-term missing children summit. there were a lot of lessons learned in the cleveland case. >> these police departments are not required to do it, correct? in cleveland situation, the only did it because they had to, because of the situation that
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existed. we doo we mean -- what do to make sure that every single local police department has the proper training? that is a major part of the problem. builthink it should be into the training curriculum of every police academy. it is going to be a critical part of their mission. it only takes one missing child case that they are not familiar how to deal with that case, no the resources available, and had to proceed. in cleveland, those cases fell through the tracks. that should never happen again. we had the chance to talk with the girls. we learn from survivors. what can they teach us? what can they teach law enforcement? they have a powerful story to tell. >> let me take this one step further. just this year, a year later, our local paper ran an editorial. i was shocked to realize how
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often the descriptions of these missing kids are not accompanied by a photograph of some sort and/or they are not put on police websites or websites of nonprofits. how do we encourage nonprofits as well as our police department to make sure that the faces of these kids are on their website? >> we have a photo distribution partnership with well over a thousand corporations, including the sioux show media platforms -- the social media platforms facebook and google. they provide profiles of who these kids are, age-progress photos of these children -- >> i understand. i am talking about law enforcement and local nonprofits. a lot times, people don't go to those sites. if i live in cleveland, i want to go to my police department and see it. let me ask you one more
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question. recovery rates in different demographics? we find that minority children are not recovered nearly as quickly as nonminority children. do you find that to be true? >> we don't keep recovery rates based on race or gender. we have an overall recovery rate. i agree with you that more needs to be done because we do know that over 50% of those children who go missing are from minority communities. they do not get the same level of media attention that is warranted. we have taken a number of steps to actually convene major networks and publications to do what we think is a more responsible effort to keeping these cases alive. because, as these
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cases age come out of sight out of mind, that should never happen. >> thank you very much. i yield back. gentleman from indiana is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for holding this important hearing. i actually had the opportunity when i was u.s. attorney, we toured your center and learned it was sometime between 2002 and 2006 that eye toward the center and was very involved in our internet crimes against children task force. my question is -- when we have task force is all around the country as well as maybe local jurisdictions have childish quotation taskforces, wayne kids come up in their investigations and you don't know enough, the child is how are the photos or the
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images of those children shared with you so you can figure out if you have information in your data bases about what law enforcement is looking at? >> that's a great question. well, we get our images from a number of sources. the principal one is our cyber tip line which again, we've received over 2.6 million reports. many of them do contain images of yet to be identified children. we pop late our databases with those images. and through the support of some of the technology companies, like google and facebook and microsoft, they help us with what we call tools. visual aids that we can go through these reams of images. there are millions. number. what are their common links? where have we seen that before? because many crimes, these images are part of a series. and some of the series may be innocuous, benign images.
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