Providing for Consideration of H.R. Homeland Security Improvement Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. U.S. Border Patrol Medical Screening Standards Act; Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Expressing Sense of the House with Respect to Whistleblower Complaint Made to Inspector General of Intelligence Community; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will address the underlying bills on this rule.

I have been at the border three times this year, and while I have been to a lot of workplaces, a lot of work environments, there is nobody I have more respect for than the professional job that the U.S. Border Patrol does of protecting this country, and they do it under the most difficult of circumstances.

Last time I was down there, they had 2,000 vacant positions. They were, in May, staffed at a level that was maybe a third of what it should have been, given the huge number of people coming across.

In addition to just apprehending people, they had to do mounds of paperwork. They had to, in essence, act as a daycare for all the young people who are sneaking in this country, but they did it without complaining, with the utmost professionalism.

I find it hard to believe, after watching these professional Border Patrol agents, that other people went down to the border and felt the problem is we have to tie their hands still more with another ombudsman, more paperwork, inviting people to file false complaints, particularly since we already have an inspector general and an Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Department of Homeland Security. So in addition to the watchmen on the Border Patrol, we had all sorts of new people down here.

I guess I am still surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised. There are some people who look at an interaction between police and a criminal and think there is something wrong with the policeman and instinctually don't like him. There are people in a corrections facility who look at the corrections officers and the prisoners and automatically think the problem in the corrections facility is the corrections officers.

That is what we have down at the border right now, which is being submitted in this bill. Rather than giving a thank-you to our Border Patrol by adding additional people, we give them a kick in the teeth by saying: There must be something wrong with you. We need more people to watch over you, make it easier to file paperwork against you, have you have to look out more than you have in the past--and such a dangerous job.

I mean, you figure some of these folks, they are out there in the middle of the night, maybe they catch a caravan of 30 or 50 people sneaking into this country, and one Border Patrol agent is supposed to bring all these people in. What sacrifice for our country.

And what do they get from this body? Do they get filling out the empty positions? They don't get that. What they get is a kick in the teeth, saying: We have something wrong with you.

Mr. Speaker, I hope we vote against the rule, and I hope we vote against the acts.

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