Press ReleaseUrgent2026-06-25

TRANSCRIPT: Congresswoman Escobar Questions DHS Secretary Mullin During Oversight Hearing, Discusses Socorro Detention Warehouses and More

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This press release from Representative Veronica Escobar (D-TX) was published on 2026-06-25 and titled "TRANSCRIPT: Congresswoman Escobar Questions DHS Secretary Mullin During Oversight Hearing, Discusses Socorro Detention W".

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TRANSCRIPT: Congresswoman Escobar Questions DHS Secretary Mullin During Oversight Hearing, Discusses Socorro Detention Warehouses and More

This morning, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) questioned DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin during an oversight hearing of the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Present at the hearing was DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar. She discussed the planned detention warehouses in Socorro, the GSA decision on BOTA, the building of the border barriers at Mt. Cristo Rey and Big Bend National Park, and more. Video of her remarks can be found here and a transcript can be found below: Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Deputy Secretary, welcome. I am going to begin with the positive. First and foremost, thank you so much for the time you made for me and my team recently. It was a really great meeting and I so appreciated your openness to hearing me out and hearing out the concerns that I brought to you. I also want to thank you because ICE Acting Director David Venturella, came to El Paso and he exhibited the same openness. This is quite a turnaround from your predecessor and his predecessor, who I could not secure a meeting with, could not get an audience with, and it was incredibly frustrating. So I want to thank you for that. I also want to thank you. GSA just announced this week that the top three bidders for the Bridge of the Americas Modernization Project have been selected. And as you know, my community has gone through a multi-year process around the modernization efforts. The vast majority of El Pasoans who participated in the process said, "let's remove commercial traffic from the center of our city, and let's move it to our other ports of entry that have capacity.” And you've upheld that decision that that had heavy input from CBP and the community, so it's great to see the progress, and I want to thank you for your support of that as well. There's a couple of issues I do want to raise with you here during my time, local issues. The first and I had extensive conversations with Mr. Venturella about Camp East Montana. And many of the concerns that I had expressed to the private contractor have emerged in a GAO report and it has been a very frustrating several months. I know we have a new contractor for which I'm delighted, but so much of what I had sounded the alarm about really fell on deaf ears. And when I sound the alarm about issues that I'm seeing in my oversight visits, it's not to play gotcha. It's not to one up anyone. It's to uphold the standards that I know we all agree should be upheld. And so I think it's really important that especially members who are sounding the alarm when there's a private contractor, that that private contractor be held accountable by all of us. I'll give you a very quick example, because I don't want to use too much of my time, but the medical, as an example and that medical contractor is still on site, by the way at Camp East Montana. Just one glaring example. I spoke with a detainee and I've spoken with dozens and dozens of detainees, but he expressed to me - he had been a Camp East Montana for weeks, and he expressed to me the pain that he had been living with, with his arm. And I asked him what happened. Well, his arm had been broken during an arrest in Minneapolis, and he had been complaining for weeks to the medical about the arm. He had a brace. He took off the brace. I could see like a letter S. His bone was so broken and medical had only given him aspirin. And so these are the things that I'm sounding the alarm about that I will continue to share with you, because I know we want to hold these contractors to federal standards. So I wanted to share that with you. When Acting ICE Director Venturella was in El Paso, we had a roundtable to talk about the three warehouses that were purchased by your predecessor in Socorro, Texas, which is in my district. Whoever preceded you that chose those three warehouses chose the worst possible location. Mr. Venturella heard from the mayor and from the water district and from the Emergency Services District. Socorro is actually a very small municipality, and they struggle with water, wastewater, pump stations. Their Emergency Services District only budgets for the their population and Mr. Venturella heard from our folks. The Emergency Services District chief told him, “I'm going to have to double my staffing if you all proceed to put human beings instead of pecans,” because those warehouses were slated for pecan storage. “I'm going to have to double my personnel. I'm going to struggle with that. I'm going to have to buy another fire truck.” The water district shared with Mr. Venturella a just how challenging it has been to get water and wastewater to existing residents. And I'm not going to go into excruciating detail, but I want to flag for you. Whoever made the decision to buy those warehouses, which I know is before your time, picked the worst possible place with the least amount of infrastructure, and it truly is not feasible to turn convert those warehouses into

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TRANSCRIPT: Congresswoman Escobar Questions DHS Secretary Mullin During Oversight Hearing, Discusses Socorro Detention Warehouses and More This morning, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) questioned DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin during an oversight hearing of the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Present at the hearing was DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar. She discussed the planned detention warehouses in Socorro, the GSA decision on BOTA, the building of the border barriers at Mt. Cristo Rey and Big Bend National Park, and more. Video of her remarks can be found here and a transcript can be found below: Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Deputy Secretary, welcome. I am going to begin with the positive. First and foremost, thank you so much for the time you made for me and my team recently. It was a really great meeting and I so appreciated your openness to hearing me out and hearing out the concerns that I brought to you. I also want to thank you because ICE Acting Director David Venturella, came to El Paso and he exhibited the same openness. This is quite a turnaround from your predecessor and his predecessor, who I could not secure a meeting with, could not get an audience with, and it was incredibly frustrating. So I want to thank you for that. I also want to thank you. GSA just announced this week that the top three bidders for the Bridge of the Americas Modernization Project have been selected. And as you know, my community has gone through a multi-year process around the modernization efforts. The vast majority of El Pasoans who participated in the process said, "let's remove commercial traffic from the center of our city, and let's move it to our other ports of entry that have capacity.” And you've upheld that decision that that had heavy input from CBP and the community, so it's great to see the progress, and I want to thank you for your support of that as well. There's a couple of issues I do want to raise with you here during my time, local issues. The first and I had extensive conversations with Mr. Venturella about Camp East Montana. And many of the concerns that I had expressed to the private contractor have emerged in a GAO report and it has been a very frustrating several months. I know we have a new contractor for which I'm delighted, but so much of what I had sounded the alarm about really fell on deaf ears. And when I sound the alarm about issues that I'm seeing in my oversight visits, it's not to play gotcha. It's not to one up anyone. It's to uphold the standards that I know we all agree should be upheld. And so I think it's really important that especially members who are sounding the alarm when there's a private contractor, that that private contractor be held accountable by all of us. I'll give you a very quick example, because I don't want to use too much of my time, but the medical, as an example and that medical contractor is still on site, by the way at Camp East Montana. Just one glaring example. I spoke with a detainee and I've spoken with dozens and dozens of detainees, but he expressed to me - he had been a Camp East Montana for weeks, and he expressed to me the pain that he had been living with, with his arm. And I asked him what happened. Well, his arm had been broken during an arrest in Minneapolis, and he had been complaining for weeks to the medical about the arm. He had a brace. He took off the brace. I could see like a letter S. His bone was so broken and medical had only given him aspirin. And so these are the things that I'm sounding the alarm about that I will continue to share with you, because I know we want to hold these contractors to federal standards. So I wanted to share that with you. When Acting ICE Director Venturella was in El Paso, we had a roundtable to talk about the three warehouses that were purchased by your predecessor in Socorro, Texas, which is in my district. Whoever preceded you that chose those three warehouses chose the worst possible location. Mr. Venturella heard from the mayor and from the water district and from the Emergency Services District. Socorro is actually a very small municipality, and they struggle with water, wastewater, pump stations. Their Emergency Services District only budgets for the their population and Mr. Venturella heard from our folks. The Emergency Services District chief told him, “I'm going to have to double my staffing if you all proceed to put human beings instead of pecans,” because those warehouses were slated for pecan storage. “I'm going to have to double my personnel. I'm going to struggle with that. I'm going to have to buy another fire truck.” The water district shared with Mr. Venturella a just how challenging it has been to get water and wastewater to existing residents. And I'm not going to go into excruciating detail, but I want to flag for you. Whoever made the decision to buy those warehouses, which I know is before your time, picked the worst possible place with the least amount of infrastructure, and it truly is not feasible to turn convert those warehouses into