Termination of National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019--Veto Message From the President of the United States

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAWFORD. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for his leadership on this issue.

Madam Speaker, today the House will vote on whether or not to override the President's veto preserving the emergency declaration regarding the ongoing crisis at the southern border, and I am glad we finally acknowledged on a bipartisan basis that there is, in fact, a crisis on the southern border. My friend from Oregon mentioned that this humanitarian crisis exists, and I couldn't agree more.

There is also another crisis at the border. There has been a 295 percent increase in apprehensions of illegal immigrants crossing our southwest border from beyond Mexico--particularly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--over the last 10 years, roughly. There have been 266 arrests of criminal aliens in the last 2 fiscal years alone, and these include criminal aliens charged or convicted of assaults, sex crimes, and killings, and those are hardly victimless crimes.

In 2017, more than 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses as methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl are flooding across the border, and I would say that probably the families of those 70,000 would argue that we certainly do have a crisis attributed to the problems at our southern border. Since fiscal year 2012, CBP has seized more than 11 million pounds of drugs between ports of entry, that is compared with only 4 million pounds at ports of entry.

Make no mistake, there is a crisis at our southern border. Since October of last year, illegal crossings have spiked. In February alone, the month President Trump declared the emergency, 76,000 people illegally crossed the border. Just yesterday, the Border Patrol took the highly unusual step of closing inland border checkpoints in response to abnormally high apprehensions. All of this goes to show that we need a border wall.

The Customs and Border Protection Commissioner put it best when he said that this is clearly both a border security and a humanitarian crisis. The President attempted to remedy this crisis by declaring the emergency, an action well within his statutory authority and constitutional obligation to protect our country.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this veto override.

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