Further Continuing Appropriations for Department of Homeland Security, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairwoman Roybal-Allard for her leadership on the Homeland Security Subcommittee, and for her ideas on how we secure the border. I also want to thank the ranking member, my friend from Tennessee; the full committee ranking woman, Kay Granger, for the work that she has done; and our leader, Mrs. Lowey, the chairwoman of the full committee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this joint resolution to reopen the government and the Department of Homeland Security. As we have said all along, we must first open up the government, and we can negotiate. We have always done that. We have always kept the government open and then we negotiate. We are doing this so the Federal employees do not suffer.

It has been 34 days since the government shutdown, far surpassing any other previous record. That means that it has been 34 days that 800,000 Federal employees have not received pay.

I live at the border. I don't just go and visit the border. I drink the water. I breathe the air. I talk to Border Patrol agents almost every day. I have talked to CBP officers every day. I talk to TSA officers. I talk to other folks, and they are doing absolutely critical work to keep us safe, but not receiving a salary.

Open up the government. Imagine trying to patrol the border or keep airline passengers safe without receiving a single dime for the last 34 days. You might be concerned about not being able to pay your mortgage, your car payment, food, and medicine. Your kids are going to school. That is what is going through the heads of those Federal employees at the border. I have talked to them, and we need to make sure that we open up the government.

The American public is ready for President Trump to put an end to this crippling shutdown. Let's keep the facts in mind. The President continues to reject any sort of compromise. We are ready. We are appropriators. We can sit down and work this out. I know we can. We have done it in the past.

What I want to make sure is that we don't hold the Federal employees hostage for a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem that we are looking at.

In Texas, we have natural barriers. Look at this, in west Texas, you have got probably over 100 feet of barriers up there. These are the natural barriers. Tell me how somebody is going to cross this natural barrier that we have.

If you look at the southern part of Texas, you have a river. Private property rights are important. Tell me how you are going to cross over this river. Are you going to put a wall here and cut off people from their property that they have owned for so long? How are you going to do this?

All I need is a $100 ladder to cross that particular area, or you can dig under with a tunnel.

Listen to the latest drug case in New York. What are the bad guys saying there? They can either go under through a tunnel, or they can use a catapult. They can use a ladder. They can use other things.

We want to make sure that we secure the border. I live on the border. I want to make sure we secure the border, but let's do it the right way. Now, if you want to stop people from coming in, remember, 67 percent of the people who are here illegally, how do they come here? Through a legal visa.

So even if you put up a wall, they are going to fly over, they are going to drive to a bridge, or they are going to go ahead and come through on a ship. Keep in mind, most of those visa overstays, do you know where they are from? Canada.

Now, I am not asking you to look at the northern border to put up a wall, but I am saying Canadians. Look at the facts. So if you want to stop drugs, just like the chairwoman said, DEA, CPB, the National Drug Threat Assessment, they will tell you that most drugs come through ports of entry, either in car compartments, in trunks, in trains, or other ways.

So even if you put up a wall, they are going to go in. What we do is, we have got to make sure that we put canines at our bridges, make sure we have enough CBP officers, and make sure we have X-ray machines.

Look at Laredo, my hometown. We get 15,000 trailers a day. We need to put technology there. We need to put canines there. We need to put in CBP officers to make sure that we work on securing our border.

Everybody talks about a crisis. In 2001, we had about 1.6 million individuals that Border Patrol stopped. Now it is 398,000. Look at what happened. The numbers have gone down.

And if you want to talk about safety, our security, I will tell you that my hometown of Laredo is about three or four times safer than we are here in Washington, D.C.; murder rates, assaults, rapes, name all of the violent crimes, it is safer there.

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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Speaker, the most dangerous thing that I do is leave the border to come to Washington, D.C. I am not talking about the politics. I am talking about, it is more violent here.

So what should we do? Let's open up the government. Let's sit down, advocate for 21st century solutions, technology, increase personnel. We are losing more Border Patrol. What do we do? What does the administration do? They put a $297 million contract out to show them how to hire Border Patrol. They just put out a $14.8 million payment to hire two--two--two Border Patrol agents for almost $15 million.

Increase personnel, increase the infrastructure at our ports of entry, and increase immigration judges. We have been increasing immigration judges for the last 3 years. This is nothing new. We have been doing that.

Again, one of the most important things, do we play defense on the 1- yard line, where we spend $18 billion at the U.S. border? Or do we play defense on the 20-yard line, which is working with the southern part of Mexico, where we put $80 million a couple of years ago? And what happened? They started stopping 220,000 individuals a year, a lot of people who are coming in, and putting money in Central America, which we have done before, to do that.

So, again, given the facts, I just call upon our friends: open up the government; let's negotiate. We are appropriators. I feel very confident if we open up the government and we sit down, we will find a solution.

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