SPEAKER_12: Good morning. Welcome to the Republican hearing on Sanctuary Cities. Are our Democratic friends on the way? Should we wait? Do we know if they're coming? Could somebody find that out? I will go ahead and make sure our Democratic colleagues have their time and ask their questions. So we're the Budget Committee, the mighty, mighty Budget Committee that did reconciliation, and thank you very much. Right on cue. I would hope this committee would take round two and see if we can do something on reconciliation in round two, but that would be up to a group of us and talk to the leadership about that. But this hearing today I think is timely. We're trying to look at the budget impact of a policy called Sanctuary Cities. Now there are 200, I think, cities, 14 states, we've got a chart here somewhere, that engage in the practice of Sanctuary Cities. Now what is that practice? Local officials, state local officials, basically have adopted a policy of not turning over to the federal government illegal immigrants subject to being turned over because they don't like the policy. They don't want to engage in deporting these people. Now under President Obama, I think three million people were deported, and I don't believe any Republican refused to work with the federal government to deport these people. And when President Obama deported three million people, it was called being strong and good government. When we try to deport people as a result of being invaded by illegal immigrants for four years under the Biden administration, we're not seizing bad guys. I don't buy that at all. I think most Americans would like to get control over our country and sovereignty over our nation. Immigration done right can be a tremendous benefit to the country. When you obliterate the borders for four years and people from all over the world flood in, you got a problem. And it needs to be fixed and cleaned up. As to ICE, if we can make ICE more professional, if we can do things at DHS that make it more professional, count me in. I think Mark Wayne Mullen would be a great secretary to do that. But to my Democratic colleagues, we'll never fix illegal immigration until you get to the source of the problem. And one of the problems we have is magnets to encourage future illegal immigration. I've got 12 sanctuary states, 200 cities. There are 25,000 people that ICE had a detainer on that refused to be turned over. Next one. We believe it endangers public safety, 10,000 criminals released by sanctuary policies who went on to be arrested for additional crimes. They should have been turned over. They weren't. They stayed in the country and they committed crimes. Nine billion in fraud that we know of and probably growing. Fifty-nine percent of illegal immigrant households on government welfare programs consisting taxpayer, costing taxpayers $42 billion a year. That's some real money. Let me give you a real-life example of what happens when you don't do this right. Fairfax, I think we're going to hear here in a minute from one of our sheriffs. Fairfax police warned prosecutors about repeat offender months before a deadly bus stop stabbing. This gentleman here, Abdul Jalloh, was in custody and had a pretty bad rap sheet. People in the prosecution business say, don't release this, I mean, deport this guy. Turn him over. Don't release him. That was good advice. It was not taken. This young lady here, Stephanie Minter, was murdered by this man. And we had this man in detention in Fairfax County and they refused to turn him over for deportation. He was allowed to stay in the county and the rest is history. A young mom is dead because of that decision. And who was this guy? He came to the country in 2012. He was arrested 30 times. Rape, malicious wounding, and assault. 2020, ICE submits a former detainer to deport him. The request is blocked by Virginia's attorney for Fairfax County, a source-backed prosecutor and defender of sanctuary cities, who ignored the detainer. On May 2025, he was arrested once more for stabbing an individual in the leg, but again released. 30 arrests, May 2025, stabbed somebody in the leg, let him go again. February 2026, just months later, he murders Ms. Minter. I'm not okay with that. I think that's offensive to who we are as a rule of law nation, to the people in Fairfax County, to this district attorney. I wish we could find a way for these people to sue you and make you pay a heavy price for ignoring your legal obligations under federal law and showing such poor judgment. How many arrests is necessary? How many people need to be stabbed before a guy like that is deported? And what's the upside of keeping him here? Is this the model citizen we want to keep in America? Now there's an ideology around sanctuary city that needs to be broken, and we're here to break it. I've got legislation designed to change this dynamic. Going forward, if a local official or a governor, anybody, refuses to cooperate with federal government in turning over people subject to deportation under federal law, they can be prosecuted because they should be prosecuted. You've got to make it so that those who hang on to these illegal immigrants and defiance of federal law, that they feel the pain, not just the public. So my hope is that we can find a way forward to break the cycle of the damage being done from sanctuary cities, the cost incurred to the taxpayer, and what happened to Stephanie just like never happens again. We're not going to quit on this. If you want to defend it, you're welcome to do it. And this is not going away. You'll never have rational immigration as long as you have 12 states saying if you get here, you never leave. You're never going to fix this if you have 200 cities that practice sanctuary policy because the illegal immigrant believes I'd get there and never leave. I've tried to work with Democrats like many over illegal immigration problem. We're not going to ignore four years of where Joe Biden obliterated our border. People came in from all over the world by tens of millions, flown into the interior of the country and only God knows where they're at. Look at the number of people on the terrorist watch list and how it's gone up 2,700%, 21, 22, 23. Where are these people? They don't know. I asked. Nobody knows where they're at. So in this invasion during the Biden administration, we had 11,000 murderers. Look at the number of people on the terrorist watch list. They're in our country and we don't know where they're at. So what we're going to do is be willing to reformize, try to fix problems that we've seen. But we're not going to give up on the idea that we need to right wrongs here and deport people that present danger and try to regain control over our immigration system. To my Democratic colleagues, what is the answer to sanctuary cities? Is it to continue the policy? Is it to eliminate the policy? All of us say eliminate it. I think the public is with us by like 80%. And until we eliminate the policy, you're going to see more and more stories like I just described. And it is now time to call the question on sanctuary cities. Will it be the norm going forward in America or will it change? To my colleagues on this side of the aisle, thank you for supporting this effort. We're fully committed to eliminating sanctuary cities for the good of the country. To my Democratic colleagues, we'd love to join with you in a rational way to do some things to make ICE more professional. But what you need to do in return is work with us to eliminate one of the biggest magnets to future legal immigration, which is sanctuary city policy. With that, Senator Merkley.