Managing the Crisis on the Southern Border
Floor Speech
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I stand here on behalf of the freedom- loving members of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative conscience of the GOP Conference, and the largest caucus with over 150 members and our friend and fearless leader Jim Banks from the Hoosier State.
Mr. Speaker, we come to this Chamber with grave concerns, with profound grief over what is happening to this great Nation at the southern border, along the border of States like my home State of Texas. My citizens are on the front lines, and the citizens of the Lone Star State and border States are at ground zero of this self-inflicted crisis.
Just because the President won't acknowledge that there is a crisis doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Mr. Speaker, it is raging out of control. It is an unmitigated disaster, and as I said, it is self- inflicted.
Reinstating catch and release while we are recovering from a pandemic? Are you kidding me? We have put mandates and restrictions on the American people who have sacrificed by staying at home. Some have lost their jobs. They don't know how they are going to make ends meet for their family.
Everybody stepped up, Mr. Speaker. They did what they were told to do in some cases, but they all acted responsibly for the sake of our country and their fellow man and the country that they love. And now, we are just letting people cross our border illegally, violate our sovereignty, break our laws, and then just be released into the interior of our country with no testing and no screening.
In Texas, Mr. Speaker, we are coming back. We have folks back to work. Kids are in school. My kids are in school. We feel normal again, and we are blessed to be in a State that puts a premium on individual liberty and personal responsibility. We have worked hard to get to where we are now.
We didn't like everything that was done to us by our government. We didn't like all the protocols and mandates, but we did the best job we could for the sake of our fellow Americans. Now, we have the potential for a flare-up in the pandemic because our hospitals are going to be overwhelmed again.
Our schools are already overwhelmed as they try to do right by their students, let them come into the classroom, have that support structure, knowing that to close your doors on these kids is to close a bright future for them. It is to lock them out of their greatest potential and to give them grief and all kinds of heartache and mental health concerns.
We have our police, who have been disparaged with cries to defund the police. They would be dismantled if the bill that passed the House supported by the Democrats ever became law and ripped away the tools that they have to not only keep our community safe but to protect them in the process. We have stripped them--or would if the bill passed--of their legal liability protections. All the while, we are putting more pressure on our local law enforcement to do the job that the Federal Government under this Commander in Chief has failed to do.
The Commander in Chief is supposed to provide for the common defense. He is supposed to be the exemplar for rule of law. He is the chief enforcer of the law. What kind of example is our President setting to just throw caution to the wind and let folks come into this country who are not our citizens, prioritizing them over the safety and health of our citizens?
I got to hear some of my colleagues express concerns over women's rights and protecting women from abuse. We all support that, and our hearts go out to any victims of abuse in this country or any country. But meanwhile, because of the policies that have been passed by this President, reinstating catch and release, empowering sanctuary cities, repealing the stay in Mexico policies, halting funding for the border wall, all of these things have sent a message that we are open for illegal business.
If you ask the cartels, business has never been better. We are lining their pockets while they exploit vulnerable people who are hopeless. They are being exploited.
Mr. Speaker, one out of every three women are sexually assaulted on their trek to this country. That statistic is from Doctors Without Borders. Children are used as a passport, trafficked by these cartels. We have empowered these cartels. This is a disaster on so many levels, and I am glad my colleagues are here to express these same sentiments in their own words.
Mr. Speaker, I will end with this. It is clear there is a cause and effect here. It is clear that policies have consequences. They incent behavior, and the behavior is causing chaos at the border.
I believe this President is obsessed. This is just a fundamental question, why our President would allow this to happen. I believe he is obsessed with undoing anything that has the name ``President Trump'' on it, regardless of its merits. I believe he is equally obsessed with placating the left and their radical agenda. I have come to that conclusion.
Mr. Speaker, we are going to speak to this. We are going to tell the truth. We are going to lay out the facts. We are going to call on our President to do the right thing and prioritize the American people and their safety and security.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his remarks. He talked about the incentives. We talked about cause and effect, and we talked about the consequences of bad policies.
Mr. Speaker, we have had double the apprehensions this year in January over last year in 2020, well over twice as many illegal crossings in the month of February. We are now 5,000-plus a day of people pouring into this country, 500 a day of illegal minors trafficked here by the cartels. And the CBP tells us that there will be over 120,000 by the end of the year. It will be a record year. Those are the results. And the facts don't lie, whether this President or our colleagues believe it or not.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for his remarks. He mentioned as one of the policies that this current President has put in place through a unilateral action--by the way, he has done more executive orders than the last three or four Presidents combined--was to repeal or rescind the national emergency declaration. But it is so rich, so rich that at the same time he is doing this, the Democrat leadership of the House under Speaker Pelosi has lined the streets around the perimeter of the Capitol with the National Guard. The height of hypocrisy.
Mr. Speaker, the American people aren't buying this. They are not. The Speaker called the walls at the southern border protecting our fellow Americans and communities immoral, until she erected razor-wire fencing around the people's House. It is offensive. It is shameful, and it is an outrage. And it is a double standard, if I have ever seen one.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma, our neighbor to the north, for his remarks. He mentioned that some political opportunists were characterizing these detention facilities under the leadership of President Trump as concentration camps. They called the men and women in uniform, our sons and daughters, who were called to duty to come alongside the Border Patrol agents to secure our southern border and defend our people, ``storm troopers.'' They referred to our attempt to humanely and safely detain the unaccompanied minors as ``kids in cages.''
Mr. Speaker, where are they now? Where are they now?
Where is the outrage?
Where is the indignation?
Where is the name calling?
How soon we forget.
Mr. Speaker, 13,000 children are being detained right now in far worse conditions and far more crowded than before.
Where are those colleagues of ours that were clanging gongs and sounding the alarm?
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, listening to the gentleman, it is just hard to believe that in the greatest country on planet Earth, that this is what we are allowing to happen. Reimporting people who violated our laws, had due process, and we did what the law says, detain and deport.
Today, under Present Biden's deluge of executive orders, they are released and rewarded: free healthcare, compliments of the taxpayers of the United States; free education, compliments of the taxpayers of the United States. We spend $12 billion in Texas alone on illegal immigration, and the price has just climbed higher and higher under this President.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. Speaker, again, I would say that America is the most generous Nation, not only the most powerful, but the most generous. We represent 5 percent of the world population, and we represent 20 percent of the immigrant population. We welcome freedom-loving, law-abiding people who want to make America their home and make a better life for their family, but only if they respect our laws and our sovereignty and the safety of the American people.
Millions of people wait for years to have legal status in this country, and this President has just created lawlessness and chaos, just like that, with a pen and a cell phone. The unilateral actions have been reckless and endangered not only our citizens, but the poor people that are making this trek on account of his message: Don't come now, is what he says, but come now. Come one, come all. It is a free- for-all at the border, is what his policies say loudly and clearly.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his heartfelt comments.
Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time remains.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, as you have heard from my colleagues, there are many levels and dimensions to this crisis. It is a national security crisis, Mr. Speaker. It is a public health and safety crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, and it is only going to get worse until this President embraces the reality, resists the left's influence, and steps up and becomes the leader that our country needs at a time like this.
I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for joining us in this Special Order.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I think that this administration and our current President, Joe Biden, would do well to take a page out of President Trump's playbook, and I mean this with all sincerity.
The reason people by the millions followed this unconventional, nonpolitician businessman and leader is because they were convinced he would fight for them. It is because they watched as he followed through on what he promised he would do for them. And lastly, Mr. Speaker, it is because he put America first.
Perfect he was not, but I will tell you what, Mr. Speaker, with every fiber of his being and ounce of strength in every waking moment, he was vigilant in keeping those promises, and one of them was to secure the border and stop illegal immigration once and for all.
Politicians have come and gone. They have made the same promises but to no avail. President Trump reduced illegal crossings by 75 percent.
We know what to do in this Chamber. We know the policies that would work to protect our fellow Americans, secure our border, and stop this chaos and madness that has ensued as a result of these reckless, unilateral decisions that this President is making.
We know what to do, Mr. Speaker, but there is no political will to do it. The message, as we have said, is clear. It is demoralizing and insulting that the leadership of this administration and our Commander in Chief have prioritized illegal immigrants over our own citizens.
I am wearing a mask in the people's House. Most of our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, have been vaccinated or have had COVID. We have social distancing, and we are still wearing masks. What a pathetic posture as we just release hundreds every day, thousands upon thousands--some say the infection rate is upward of 20 percent--into the interior of our country and into our communities while we the American people have spent trillions of dollars and made untold sacrifices to help our country get back to its feet. It is just unbelievable.
Those poor Border Patrol agents, who have had to hear that they too should be defunded, are hamstrung, at best. They see the revolving door.
How would you like to go to work every day, Mr. Speaker, with a clear mission, and a righteous and patriotic mission, to secure the border and protect your citizens and have a Commander in Chief who says come one, come all, and has such little regard for the rule of law and for those who risk their lives every day to enforce it?
These are just the cold, hard facts. It is the truth. I believe, and always have, in the American people's good judgment. While some folks may have had an aversion to the style and personality of the last President--I can appreciate that--they have to look back and say that he achieved unprecedented results that left this Nation safer, stronger, and more prosperous than we have been in recent history, if ever.
Mr. Speaker, I pray our country will return to that level of strength, and I pray this President will embrace the facts and reality. I hope he comes to visit border States like Texas and listens to the cries that have gone unheard from his administration, from the people of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and throughout this land who need him to step up and be our Commander in Chief.
Mr. Speaker, I am done, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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