SECRETARY RUBIO: I want to welcome everybody. Bienvenido. Thank you for coming and being a part of this very important initiative. It's a critical initiative. Obviously, we start with a strong focus on security, but there is so much more here. And as you've seen from - so much more we can work together on, and as you've seen from the cabinet members that are here today. Again, on behalf of the President - he is currently on his way to Dover Air Force Base to receive, sadly, the remains of the six Americans who lost their lives in the operation against Iranian terrorism. And so he apologizes for not being able to join us for this lunch, but he knew you would understand.
But he is very excited about this initiative, and I am personally very excited to be part of this with each of you today. It's a top priority for us, and while there are clearly a focus on the security of the hemisphere, as you can see from the representation in our Cabinet, from Trade to Commerce to Energy to Treasury. And there is also a focus very strongly on the opportunities we have to work together economically, but you can't have economic progress without security.
And as evidence of the President's strong commitment to this initiative, so that this is not just going to be something where we meet one time and have conversations and we meet once a year and put out a paper, we wanted it to be an issue of action. He has appointed Secretary Noem as the special envoy dedicated to this relationship. And you will see a lot of her; she'll be very involved with each of you at a personal level, and on a daily and weekly and monthly level, to ensure that what we talk about here today and the work we do together continues on, and we can build upon that.
So, I want to turn it over to our envoy, who will be doing this, and she'll be running our program. And again, thank you really, truly, for joining us in this what I think is a very historic gathering of allies and friends, as I said in my comments earlier today.
Secretary Noem.
SECRETARY NOEM: Well, thank you, Secretary Rubio. I appreciate all of you being here today and for making this a priority. First of all, I offer thanks to our President, who had the vision to bring all of you, as world leaders, here to have the conversation on not just protecting your countries, but also protecting your neighbors and the Shield of Americas becoming a real vision.
This is intended to be a group that works together to make sure that we're each defending our own sovereignty, we're each defending our own security and economic prosperity, but then also continuing to build on these relationships to ensure that we can do that in a way that's effective, defeating the enemies that we have amongst us in the cartel organizations, which our country has designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. But then also by adding that security element, we have an opportunity then to have economic prosperity that blesses all of our people.
So, I do want to thank the President for creating this and for giving me the honor and the opportunity to serve as a special envoy to this region, to the Western Hemisphere. This Shield of Americas will be a powerful example to the rest of the world about what's possible. There is nothing like this happening today anywhere else in the world, and the way that we cooperate on our shared ideals of freedom and of democracy and safety and security will be a shining light to all of those who wish to be more like all of us.
So, my background is I'm a farmer and a rancher that served in government, in Congress, as governor, and then as Secretary of Homeland Security. In the last year as Secretary of Homeland Security, we have focused on securing our border. We have transformed our country from one that was being invaded by enemies, millions of them that were coming in unvetted, that we didn't know who was there and who wished to harm us. We've secured that border. We've focused on removing public safety threats. And over three million people have been deported or removed from our country in the last year.
Secure borders has changed everything for our country. It's allowed us an opportunity to focus on business and investment relationships with other countries and has ended the crisis that our country was going through in the years previous to President Trump's leadership. So that is something that we recognize, that now that America is secure and our borders are secure, that we want to focus on our neighbors and to help our neighbors with their borders and challenges that they have, so that they may have the security that we enjoy.
I've looked forward to meeting many of you. Many of you I've met throughout the last year and spent time with. I know President Bukele was probably, I think, the first world leader I had the chance to visit with. We partnered on security in El Salvador and appreciate the way he's brought peace to El Salvador and prosperity is following. That's been a great example.
Also went to Chile and spent some time and enjoyed that as well. We focused on - under the Department of Homeland Security, we have cybersecurity operations and experts, and we worked there with embedding some cybersecurity experts and have that opportunity to continue to build on that if that's some of the challenges that you may have.
I spent some time in Argentina with President Milei as well and appreciated his focus on economic prosperity and how we could work together on that. And of course, Ecuador has been very strong partners with all of us. We've worked on not just security and fighting cartels but also making sure the drug trafficking is being addressed and we can build those relationships.
I've been in many of your other countries working with your presidents and leaders and hope to continue to build on that so that we could have candid conversations about what to do in the future. Our objectives are going to be to destroy the cartels, to go after these narcoterrorists that are destroying our people, killing our children and our grandchildren. We're also going to keep our adversaries at bay. Those adversaries that wish to change our way of life and our values that are outside of our hemisphere, we want to ensure that we're continuing to keep them out of our hemisphere and focus on building alliances amongst ourselves and our strengths.
We have worked and are proud of the Department of War with the conference that many of you just attended the last few days, and we'll continue to do that. We want our hemisphere to be safer, to be more sovereign, and to be more prosperous, and looking forward to working with you on all of that.
The first objective will be not just on sovereignty but also migration control, that we will work on economic prosperity. We'll have and - reverse these harmful foreign influences that have come into many of our businesses, our technologies, and we've seen infiltrate different areas of our way of life. That will be my objective every day. I will, when the press leaves, give you all my personal cell phone number so that you can reach me at any time that you may need something, and we'll work together to continue to make sure that our relationship is a shield to the Americas, that this will be a Western Hemisphere that is better, safer, more prosperous, and more free because of the leadership that all of you provide.
So, thank you to Secretary Rubio for hosting this and having the vision to bring us all together. I think this will be something that for years to come will bring more security to our nations.
SECRETARY RUBIO: All right. Well, thank you. We'll ask our friends - and not friends - to leave. All right.
