Securing America's Future Act of 2018
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today because we finally have the opportunity to secure our borders once and for all.
Before coming to Congress, I was a counterterrorism prosecutor in the Justice Department. I saw the threats along our border firsthand.
After getting elected to the House, the very first bill I introduced put an end to this catch-and-release system. Here we are in this Chamber 14 years later, and I am still fighting for it.
Doing nothing should not be an option. As I have said before, it is time for Congress to act. Today, we have an historic opportunity to fix this problem once and for all with the Securing America's Future Act.
Our legislation delivers on the President's four pillars, which I worked closely with him on. It secures the border by building a wall, ends chain migration and the diversity lottery, provides a rational DACA solution, and also deploys new technology and adds boots on the ground.
We must move toward a moral, merit-based system and not a random system.
This legislation also provides, Mr. Speaker, a legal solution that will keep families together when they cross the border illegally.
Our bill brings a generational change that prevents us from revisiting these problems down the road.
But this isn't just about closing loopholes and fixing broken laws. Border security is a national security issue. Violent gangs like MS-13, human traffickers and smugglers sneaking into our country infect our neighborhoods, and too many lives are at risk, and opioids come across the border.
Unfortunately, the threats do not stop there. We know that international terrorists are trying to exploit our border. This was made clear from the materials found in bin Laden's compound and from propaganda outlets like Inspire magazine. The 9/11 Commission report even stated that predecessors to al-Qaida had been exploiting weaknesses in our border security since the 1990s.
In April, Secretary Nielsen testified that ISIS has encouraged its followers to cross our southwest border, given the loopholes that they are also aware of. We must solve this problem, and we must solve it today.
So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill and give the American people the security that they have long demanded and deserve.
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Mr. McCAUL. McSally), the chair of the Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security.
Let me say, this is a historic opportunity to get something done that we probably haven't gotten done in 25 years. But let me first say that I am a father of five children.
I have been down to the detention centers and seen these kids down there, these babies. From a human standpoint, it is one of the most horrible experiences I have had in my lifetime.
Let me say this, Mr. Speaker: this bill protects our children. It protects our children because it provides a deterrent for them not to come here in the first place. It also keeps families together and doesn't separate them, as current law dictates. Current law dictates this, if we don't change the law.
Let me also add, I talked to the Secretary today and 10,000 of these 12,000 children who are in the detention centers came without their parents. And who were their guardians: the drug traffickers, the smugglers, and the coyotes, as they made the dangerous journey from Central America all the way up through Mexico and into the United States.
I have seen horrors of that, and this bill will provide the deterrence to stop that from happening because, as we know, they are abused on the way up that journey. They are abused physically and sexually and demoralized and recruited. That has to stop, and, Mr. Speaker, this bill will stop that.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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