INL Should Fight Crime, Not Fight Conservatives
House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security and Trade
2025-03-27
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Source: Congress.gov
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Transcript
Welcome to all of you. Thank you for staying after votes. Yep. And the subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere will come to order. The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement for the purposes of the subcommittee's reauthorization of J family programming at the State Department. Now I'm going to recognize myself for an opening statement. And once again, thank you to the witnesses for coming and giving us your time and your expertise. Always welcome. So the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, INL, acronym, the motto is security through justice. But unfortunately, for the last four years, they have been more interested in security through ideology. trading, fight against narcotics for seminars to teach pronouns, and workshops on gender diversity. I believe that the result of this alien ideology has been damaging to our national security, especially in a region which is very close to my heart, Central America. As some of you know, I was the Central American Bureau Chief for Univision Network during the Civil War in El Salvador. I lived in that country for many years. until 1992 when they signed a peace treaty. Central America, don't I know it, has suffered for decades and this was the perfect time to help them. Let's go to Guatemala. Almost 9 million migrants passed through their territory trying to come to the United States in the last four years. The Guatemalans needed INL's assistance to tackle the human trafficking and narcotics. But unfortunately, the Biden administration refused to work with the attorney general of that country because apparently she was too conservative. They sanctioned her. Her name is Consuelo Porras. I don't know her, but I do know that she is the head of Ministerio Publico, which is for us, the United States, the attorney generals.
the attorney general. Unfortunately, the previous administration refused to work with her. I believe that if the Guatemalans put her there, the Biden's bureaucrats don't have any business in telling her that she was not fit for the job. And they attacked her over and over again. This is the perfect definition of putting politics and ideology before safety and respect for our neighbors' political views. If the Guatemalans are conservative, well, so be it. We've got to respect it. Let's talk now about El Salvador, the country which has been tackling a terrible gang problem for 30 years. I was killed, I mean, I was killed here. I was about to be killed in few instances. I lived it, I know it. And things were terrible in El Salvador until President Bukele arrived in the picture. El Salvador should have been a perfect partner for the INL Bureau, which by the way, it says that its mandate is to bring down transnational criminal organizations like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. But instead of training the Salvadorian police forces, INL, Law Enforcement Academy, taught gender and inclusion as one of their main goals for El Salvador. I believe I'm sure that at that moment, the Salvadorians were going to be saying the gringos have gone crazy. I am no law enforcement expert, but I am fairly confident that getting MS-13 to learn how to pronounce correctly pronouns is not going to destroy them from committing any crimes. I am a witness. I have spoken to him that Bukele wants to work with the United States, but instead the Biden administration cut funds to the Salvadorian police by 50%. Why? And INL concentrated its budget for El Salvador to give it to NGOs that attack his security plan.
With or without us, Bukele was successful. His strategy reduced one of the world's highest homicide rates to nearly zero. He presented this strategy to INL, and they said, no, we're not going to work with you. During the last four years, unfortunately, woke ideology has replaced common sense, but thankfully, things have changed under President Trump. And we're going to return the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to its original mission, which is helping our allies fight crime, dismantling gangs, restoring law and order. They have a budget of $2 billion a year, and I think we owe it to the American taxpayers to commit
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