Senator Kim Focuses on Security, Community Safety, and Addressing Immigration Case Backlog During Homeland Security Committee Hearing
January 16, 2025
WASHINGTON D.C. – Today, Senator Andy Kimfocused on prioritizing national and community security, and creating a more efficient and orderly process to fix our broken immigration system during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The hearing was entitled,‘Remain in Mexico’,and featured Hon. Ken Cuccinelli, former Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security; Mr. Adam Isacson, Director of Defense Oversight, Washington Office on Latin America; and Andrew Arthur, Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“When I’ve gone around New Jersey and talked to a wide range of people about some of our objectives… A couple things came up over and over again. Number one, making sure that we can provide security for our nation. Keeping our communities safe. Our families safe,” said Senator Kim. “Two, addressing the migrant backlog, just the amount of pressure we’re feeling on different towns, communities all around the country. And three, about how do we try to have an orderly process. I think everyone is in agreement. We are a sovereign nation. We should have control over our sovereign borders, whether air, land, or sea. I try to approach this in that kind of lens.”
Senator Kim’s questions to the witnesses highlighted the opportunity for agreement to increase the number of asylum judges to address the migrant case backlog and create an orderly process to adjudicate active cases. According to a 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had “more than 786,000 affirmative asylum cases pending determination for a period longer than 180 days from the date of filing.” The report states that, “this occurred because USCIS did not have sufficient funding, staffing, and planning to complete its affirmative asylum caseload.”
Senator Kim is a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP); the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and the Special Committee on Aging. Before being elected to the U.S. Senate, Kim represented New Jersey’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. House and was a career public servant working in national security and diplomacy at the White House, State Department, and Pentagon.
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