[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 56 (Wednesday, April 13, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H1670-H1672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENHANCING OVERSEAS TRAVELER VETTING ACT
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill
(H.R. 4403) to authorize the development of open-source software based
on certain systems of the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of State to facilitate the vetting of travelers against
terrorist watchlists and law enforcement databases, enhance border
management, and improve targeting and analysis, and for other purposes,
as amended.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
H.R. 4403
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Enhancing Overseas Traveler
Vetting Act''.
SEC. 2. OPEN-SOURCE SCREENING SOFTWARE.
(a) In General.--Subject to subsection (c), the Secretary
of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State--
(1) are authorized to develop open-source software based on
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's global travel targeting
and analysis systems and the Department of State's
watchlisting, identification, and screening systems in order
to facilitate the vetting of travelers against terrorist
watchlists and law enforcement databases, enhance border
management, and improve targeting and analysis; and
(2) may make such software and any related technical
assistance or training available to foreign governments or
multilateral organizations for such purposes.
(b) Report to Congress.--Not later than 60 days after the
date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland
Security and Secretary of State shall submit to the
appropriate congressional committees a plan to implement
subsection (a).
(c) Provision of Software and Congressional Notification.--
Not later than 15 days before the open-source software
described in subsection (a) is made available to foreign
governments or multilateral organizations pursuant to such
subsection, the Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary
of State, with the concurrence of the Director of National
Intelligence, shall--
(1) certify to the appropriate congressional committees
that such availability is in the national security interests
of the United States; and
(2) provide to such committees information on how such
software or any related technical assistance or training will
be made available.
(d) Rule of Construction.--The authority provided under
this section shall be exercised in accordance with applicable
provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2751 et
seq.), the Export Administration Regulations, or any other
similar provision of law.
(e) Prohibition on Additional Funding.--No additional funds
are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this section.
(f) Definitions.--In this section:
(1) Appropriate congressional committees.--The term
``appropriate congressional committees'' means--
(A) in the House of Representatives--
(i) the Committee on Homeland Security; and
(ii) the Committee on Foreign Affairs; and
(B) in the Senate--
(i) the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs; and
(ii) the Committee on Foreign Relations.
(2) Export administration regulations.--The term ``Export
Administration Regulations'' means--
(A) the Export Administration Regulations as maintained and
amended under the authority of the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) and codified in
subchapter C of chapter VII of title 15, Code of Federal
Regulations; or
(B) any successor regulations.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
California (Mr. Royce) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman)
each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce).
General Leave
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to
include any extraneous material on the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I just want to begin by thanking our colleague, Mr. Hurd from Texas,
for his work here on behalf of the safety and security of the American
people. He is a former CIA undercover officer. As a result of that, I
think he had some unique insights here in moving this legislation. The
name of this bill is Enhancing Overseas Traveler Vetting Act.
I would also like to thank one other Member, and that is the Homeland
Security chairman, Mr. McCaul. He is also on the committee that Mr.
Sherman and I serve on, but I thank him for his leadership on the
bipartisan Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter
Travel. That task force made recommendations, with the help of Mr.
Hurd, and it led to the introduction of this important piece of
legislation. It was passed out of the committee I chair, the Foreign
Affairs Committee, back in February. I also want to recognize Mr. Eliot
Engel and Mr. Sherman for their assistance and support on this as well.
I think the reason this has such resonance with the Members in the
House is because the global threat of terrorism has never been as high
as it is today. In just the last 12 months, we have seen terrorists
strike in my home State of California; we have seen it in France,
Belgium, Turkey, India, Tunisia--where I just was a few days ago--the
Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq. We were up in Erbil and
Baghdad.
And I have got to tell you, this is a situation that is compounding.
No
[[Page H1671]]
country is immune. This radical ideology that is now on the Internet--a
virtual caliphate on the Internet, we should call it--knows no
boundaries. It is pulling individuals from all over the globe. It is
radicalizing them and, increasingly, doing it without them even having
to leave their neighborhood.
I just returned, as I mentioned, from Iraq, Tunisia, and Jordan, and
I heard firsthand there about the foreign fighter threat. You have got
35,000 foreigners right now, and 3,600 of them were from Europe. They
are actually from a total of 120 countries. They have traveled to the
Middle East to join ISIS. Many of these fighters are now looking to
return to their homes back in Brussels, back in Paris and the capitals
of Europe--even here in the United States.
Bazi was the name of a young girl who testified before our committee.
Mr. Sherman and I remember some of the things she told us. She was
taken captive by an American who had been recruited over the Internet
to join ISIS. She became his concubine, and he felt compelled to tell
her this was part of his ideology. He had converted to this. As a
result of her being an apostate, she had to go through what other
Yazidis and Christians and other faiths had to go through, which was to
submit to him and to the will of his particular code.
Eventually, she got loose. She got free of him and told us that tale
of how, ultimately, she lost every male in the village--all her
brothers--and how her sisters are now concubines. Many of them were
foreign fighters, and that is why information sharing between countries
is more critical now than ever, because this thing is everywhere now.
The bipartisan task force's report highlighted the lack of any
comprehensive global database of foreign fighters and suspected
terrorists. In its absence, the U.S. and other countries rely on a
patchwork system for exchanging extremist identities, which is weak and
increases the odds that foreign fighters and suspected terrorists will
be able to cross borders undetected.
So this bill, thanks to Mr. Hurd's expertise, will authorize the
Secretaries of the Department of State and Homeland Security to develop
open-source software platforms to vet travelers against terrorist watch
lists and against law enforcement databases. It permits the open-source
software to be shared with foreign governments and multilateral
organizations for police purposes, like INTERPOL.
This bill reflects the recommendations made by, as I said, our
colleagues on the task force, which we have worked together on. I thank
Mr. Hurd and Chairman McCaul for their leadership working to make our
Nation safer against terrorist threats.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in support of H.R. 4403, the Enhancing Overseas Traveler
Vetting Act.
I want to associate myself with the comments of our committee chair,
particularly his praise for the hard work of Mr. Hurd and the
involvement of Chairman McCaul of the Homeland Security Committee.
I am a cosponsor of this legislation, and I supported it in the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, which considered the bill on February 24,
and voted it out by voice unanimously, with no opposition. It is also
my understanding that the bill also passed unanimously in the Committee
on Homeland Security.
As the chairman of our committee explained, this legislation
authorizes the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security
to develop open-source versions of software that vets travelers against
terrorist watch lists and law enforcement databases. Once the software
is developed, we will be able to share it with our allies and
multilateral organizations involved in police work, such as INTERPOL.
That means that we will have better software in the hands of worldwide
law enforcement sooner and it will be interoperable.
As things stand now, we do not have a comprehensive global database
for identifying and tracking terrorists. As the bipartisan Task Force
on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel, which was
established by Chairman McCaul and the Committee on Homeland Security,
highlighted in its September 2015 report, ``countries, including the
United States, rely on a patchwork system for swapping extremist
identities, increasing the odds foreign fighters will slip through the
cracks.''
The Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks demonstrate the need for a
global system. Since those tragedies, there has been finger pointing
about missed intelligence and criticism over the lack of information
sharing across borders.
Just in February, Europol warned that more than 5,000 Europeans with
European passports had traveled to ISIS and Syria to become ISIS
fighters. In late March, European security officials told the
Associated Press that the Islamic State group had trained at least 400
attackers and sent them to Europe to carry out specific attacks.
Of course, we have a visa waiver relationship with most of Europe,
and that means these European passport holders will be able to visit
the United States without special vetting by our officials. There is an
exception to that for those European passports that have been stamped
indicating they visited Syria or Iraq.
This should not give us a whole lot of false security because,
typically, foreign fighters who want to join ISIS travel to Turkey,
where their passport is stamped with a Turkish stamp and then they
sneak into ISIS-controlled areas. ISIS does not stamp their passport
entry into the Islamic State, so the passports of these Europeans that
have gone to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria do not bear a Syrian or
Iraqi stamp.
{time} 1530
In addition, if, for some reason, they did bear such a stamp, any
European can simply go and ask for a replacement passport and, in most
cases, there will be no record available to the United States that this
person had ever visited Syria or Iraq.
So we need a system that gives us the best possible opportunity to
identify foreign fighters, but especially those who hold European
passports.
If we are going to fight and prevent global terrorism in tandem with
other countries, the United States and our allies must be on the same
page when it comes to vetting travelers and tracking would-be
terrorists. This legislation helps us do just that.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4403.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hurd), who is a member of the Committee on
Homeland Security, and he is also the author of this bill.
Mr. HURD of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Sherman for
his support of this bill; and I would like to thank Chairman Royce, not
only for his support of this bill, but for everything that he does on
his committee to make sure that our allies know that they can trust us
and that our enemies know they should fear us.
Last month, terrorists struck again in the heart of Europe. Their
attack in Brussels was part of a wider ISIS campaign to ramp up
external operations. Already, the group has been tied to more than 80
terrorist plots or attacks against the West. This is an unprecedented
figure.
We have been sounding the alarm here in Congress about the rising
tide of terror, as well as the global security gaps being exploited by
extremists. My bill, H.R. 4403, would help close one of those major
loopholes to make it harder for terrorists to cross borders.
This bill was a recommendation of the bipartisan Task Force on
Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel, on which I served.
In our final report in September, we found that ``gaping security
weaknesses overseas--especially in Europe--are putting the U.S.
homeland in danger by making it easier for aspiring foreign fighters to
migrate to terrorist hotspots and for jihadists to return to the
West.''
I saw firsthand that our partners are in a pre-9/11 mindset, and that
many of them have failed to conduct adequate counterterrorism
screening. For instance, key operatives behind the Paris and Brussels
attacks managed to travel back and forth to Syria and throughout
Europe, undetected, even though some were on terrorist watch lists.
This should not just be a wake-up call, it should be a call to action.
[[Page H1672]]
My bill would allow the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of State to develop specially tailored, open-source watch-
listing and screening systems to help our foreign partners disrupt
terrorist travel. We have an interest in providing it to several
foreign countries, and we should do that.
However, as a matter of overarching Federal policy, this bill does
not choose open-source over proprietary. Indeed, the Federal Government
should consider proprietary and open-source software and make an
educated choice on which one fits the need the best. In this case,
providing our partners with software they trust simply makes sense.
Thousands of ISIS fighters have Western passports, and if our
overseas partners don't stop them first, we might have to confront them
here at home. Yet many governments lack the capacity to properly vet
travelers and weed out known or suspected jihadists. That is why we
must act today on this legislation and send a clear signal to our
allies that America is ready to lead this fight.
I want to thank my fellow members on the task force for their hard
work, and I want to particularly thank Mr. Vela and Mr. Keating, on the
Democratic side, for their leadership and support for this legislation.
I urge my colleagues to vote for this measure.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, seeing as I have no additional speakers, I
urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4403, the Enhancing Overseas
Traveler Vetting Act.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would just say this for the
Members. The 9/11 Commission Report was pretty prescient on this point.
It said: ``The U.S. Government cannot meet its own obligations to the
American people to prevent the entry of terrorists without a major
effort to collaborate with other governments.''
The report said further: ``We should do more to exchange terrorist
information with trusted allies and raise U.S. and global borders
security standards for travel and border crossing, over the medium and
long term, through extensive international cooperation.''
This is what the bill does. And, frankly, the Department of State
here and the Department of Homeland Security, giving them this
authorization to develop this open-source software, to vet those
travelers against terrorist watch lists and against those law
enforcement databases, is absolutely vital.
I will just mention that the so-called Islamic State--we call it
Daesh or ISIS--has already threatened to send hundreds of its European
fighters back to the continent to carry out attacks like those attacks
that they have already carried out in Paris and Brussels and, frankly,
attacks like the one they carried out in San Bernardino, California. So
I think this measure really deserves our unanimous support.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hurd of Texas). The question is on the
motion offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) that the
House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 4403, as amended.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the
rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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