Open Our Government

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARBAJAL. Madam Speaker, this week, I visited the Customs and Border Protection facilities where 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonso was held shortly before he fell sick and tragically died on Christmas Eve. This was just 3 weeks after 7-year-old Jakelyn Caal died in custody nearby.

I went to Alamogordo because I wanted to hear directly from CBP agents why these two children died and what changes are being made to ensure that not one more child dies while in United States custody.

CBP agents told us that they needed more personnel, more technological support, better coordination between agencies, and improvements to facilities to accommodate the higher percentage of children and families seeking asylum.

One checkpoint I visited didn't have a shower for migrants. They were transported an hour each way every 2 days for a shower. The other facility didn't even have potable water.

The Border Patrol agents were also understandably frustrated that their online database did not synchronize with DHS systems, creating even more confusion when migrants were being moved or processed. Not once did the agents mention building a wall.

What I confirmed was that this President purposefully created this humanitarian crisis at the border for political reasons by taking the following actions:

Trump cut the Central American Minors refugee program, which had allowed migrants from Central America to apply for humanitarian relief while in their home countries instead of traveling to our border, forcing them to make a dangerous journey with their children to escape life-threatening violence in their countries.

He then separated families at the border, taking toddlers from the arms of parents and losing track of people's children in the process, a stain on the history of our great Nation.

And he blocked asylum-seekers from their legal right to present themselves for screenings through metering at the ports or denying all asylum claims, creating huge backlogs at the legal ports of entry with squalid conditions and pushing more migrants to attempt to cross the border between ports of entry out of desperation.

This is a real humanitarian crisis that is unfolding because of the President's obsession with an ineffective wall that Mexico was supposedly going to pay for rather than listening to the actual needs of our CBP officers.

The President continues to repeat the lie, as he did last night again, that America faces a crisis in the number of border crossings from Mexico. Surprisingly, there was not one migrant housed at the two CBP facilities I visited this week.

The reality is that overall border crossings are on the decline. There has been an 80 percent reduction in the number of border crossings since the year 2000.

Trump created and welcomed this shutdown, telling the public that he is proud to shut down the government and that he ``will take the mantle of shutting it down.'' The President should, instead, join Congress and immediately sign bipartisan legislation that previously passed both the House and the Senate to reopen the government.

More than 800,000 Federal workers aren't sure of when their next paycheck is coming, airport security and safety is suffering, and the affordable housing programs for our homeless veterans are quickly running out of funding on the central coast that I represent and across the Nation. I urge the President to do the right thing so that we can get to work for the American people.

Mr. President, open our government up.

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