Ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Homeland Security tells Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary “Your department is out of control”

“You are brazenly violating the law, every hour of every day,” Sen. Murphy tells DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, on Thursday, May 8, 2025, in a meeting about Trump’s Fiscal year 2026 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), told DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that she has been “flagrantly ignoring proper use of the funding that Congress has already appropriated to DHS,” and explained to her how she has been violating the legal rights of immigrants. Sen. Murphy told Noem her actions “violate the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Here is a portion of what Sen. Murphy said to Secretary Noem in the meeting:

“I say this with seriousness and respect, but your department is out of control. You are spending like you don’t have a budget. You’re on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee. You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation implementing a brand new immigration system that you have invented, that has little relation to the statutes that you are required, and that you are commanded, to follow, as spelled out in  your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States. Your agency acts as if laws don’t matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate. You act as if your disagreement with the law, or even the public’s disagreement with the law, is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does not give you that ability. You are on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you’re going to spend more money than you’ve been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over 2 months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but the

Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you have been given, or to invent money, and this obsession with spending at the border, as the chairwoman mentioned, has left the country unprotected elsewhere. The security threats to the United States are higher, not lower, than before Trump came to office to fund the border. You have illegally gutted spending for cyber security. As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You’ve withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people in this country because of your illegal withholding of these funds. Your myopia about the border, fueled by President Trump’s prejudice against people who speak a different language, has shattered many of this country’s most important defenses.

Now, let’s talk about the impoundments. When Congress appropriates funds for a specific purpose, the administration has no discretion as to whether to spend or not spend that money, unless you go through a very specific process with this committee. Let me give you two of many instances of this illegal impoundment: The first is a Shelter in Services Program. Senator Britt may want to zero that account out, but that account is funded, and it was funded in a bipartisan way. You don’t like the program. Your policy is to treat migrants badly. I think that’s abhorrent, but it doesn’t matter that you don’t like the program. You cannot cancel spending in this program and you cannot use the funds as you have, to fund other things like ICE. You’ve also canceled citizenship and integration grants, which help lawful permanent residents become citizens, helping them take the citizenship test. I know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants, but that goal is not broadly shared by the American public. That’s why Congress in a bipartisan way, for decades, has funded this program to help immigrants in this country become citizens.”