WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, during a House Appropriations Committee Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing, Congressman Tony Gonzales (TX-23) asked Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons about repatriation efforts underway at Fort Bliss and Biggs Airfield base in El Paso and Homeland Security Task Forces.

Transcript lightly edited for clarity

Congressman Gonzales: I represent Fort Bliss, and Biggs Airfield has been at the epicenter of getting things back on track. I’ve visited several times, and these repatriation flights are working. One of the concerns I have is staffing. When I visited a few weeks ago, I noticed there were only a handful of civilian coordinators on the ground. When you have three people sharing a shift, that makes it difficult.  

What role does ICE play in ensuring that bases actively assisting with repatriation flights—like Fort Bliss—are adequately staffed, especially with civilian personnel? 

ICE Acting Director Lyons: Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, this administration has taken a whole-of-government approach to addressing our current needs within ICE. The Department of Defense has been an excellent partner—specifically at Fort Bliss. Biggs Airfield is a key part of that partnership. 

Through our contracting and budgeting, we want to ensure that we actually have men and women—officers and agents—who carry a gun and badge out, protecting the homeland doing the job that they swore for. It's going to be key for us to recruit and maintain and really hire these key civilian contractors to help us achieve that mission.  

By having those contractors working at the facilities as far as medical care, housing, food, processing, that'll ensure that we are moving swiftly, because we [ICE] do not detain for punitive-- we detain in order to remove. This helps us move that process quickly and gets the men and women who are sworn law enforcers back on the street.   

Congressman Gonzales: Can you speak to how many ICE flights have been conducted out of Fort Bliss? Do we know how many illegal aliens we’ve successfully removed? 

ICE Acting Director Lyons: I’ll take that as a “get back” and make sure we get the exact figures to your office. But ICE conducts removal flights daily. Just yesterday, we conducted over 55 international missions across the country. One of the things that I'm dedicated to is ensuring that we do not have a bottleneck in our detention—that we are not clogging up detention space. We want to ensure that individuals with final removal or deportation orders are swiftly and humanely returned to their countries of origin. 

Congressman Gonzales: I look forward to continuing our collaboration. I want to make sure that ICE and ERO have all the resources, personnel, and policy support needed to perform your mission. I appreciate your partnership with the Department of Defense—it’s been very successful. Once again, Fort Bliss has proven to be the epicenter of this success, and it’s working in a very positive way. 

My next question is about task forces. Task forces work—especially HSI-led ones—and ICE plays a big role in them. As we work through the budget process, we’re trying to evaluate what works and what doesn’t. Can you speak to the importance of task forces? 

ICE Acting Director Lyons: 100%—task forces are key to securing the homeland. Under the executive order that established Homeland Security Task Forces, we are now deploying these forces into every state. They address border-related issues—both north and south—as well as maritime operations, while hammering down on those public safety threats that are in those communities—specific to states and regions. 

I think the key is having the whole of government come together between Department of Justice, all the entities within DHS, bringing all those law enforcement entities together in the intelligence network that that has will help us eradicate these transnational gangs, these transnational terrorist organizations that are actually operating within the border and on the border. I think task forces are the key to that.    

Congressman Gonzales: We had Secretary Noem testify before us last week, and she highlighted there's over 600,000 confirmed convicted criminal aliens loose in our country. And that's a huge number. And it's going to take everyone coming together to make sure that that gets taken care of. Once again, convicted in a court of law, criminal illegal aliens, and ICE is going to be key to that.