Border Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUTHERFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are calling the situation at the southern border a manufactured crisis. What a heartless and naive thing to say.

Tell that to the families of almost 300 people who die every week from the heroin flooding across our southern border.

Tell that to the ICE agents who seized enough synthetic opioids in 2017 to kill every single American by overdose.

Or come on down with me to the 2100 block of Jefferson Street in Jacksonville, Florida, and you tell that to the medical examiner who saw, in 2017, the highest rate of fentanyl-related deaths in the entire State of Florida.

A manufactured crisis? Hardly, Mr. Speaker.

Thankfully, the experts at DHS who are on the ground doing the good work to protect us understand what is necessary to combat this crisis, and they have asked Congress for our help. These DHS professionals have told us that security at the border requires a multilayered approach that includes additional personnel, increased technology, access roads, and, yes, a wall.

The wall is not and never has been the beginning and end to border security, but it is an important part of a comprehensive security plan. Let's give the DHS the money for the wall, get out of the way, and let the folks on the ground do their job.

Mr. Speaker, I have spent 41 years of my life as a law enforcement officer, including 12 years as sheriff. One thing I know firsthand is the judgment of the patrolman should amplify larger than the back- office bureaucrat. Listen to those in operations. Those who would argue against the pleas of the DHS either haven't seen what is really going on or are intentionally ignoring the crisis.

For my friends on the other side of the aisle who are calling this a manufactured crisis, they know this isn't about the $5 billion for the wall. In fact, most of them at one time or another have already voted to fund a wall. To them, it is really about not wanting to support our President. It is about being part of a resistance movement.

If you want to talk about a manufactured crisis, I can point you in the right direction, because it is manufactured in Central America, it is manufactured in South America, and it is being manufactured by drug cartels to be trafficked north and smuggled across the southern border and into our communities. I have seen firsthand the lives destroyed and the communities torn apart by this scourge coming through our porous southern border.

This bickering over one-tenth of 1 percent of our annual budget has become a hyperbolic political football, putting lives at risk. I say, enough, Mr. Speaker. Our Federal law enforcement officers on the ground at the border have asked for our help, and we have a solemn obligation to give them what they need to keep Americans safe.

A manufactured crisis? Hardly, Mr. Speaker.

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