Managing the Crisis on the Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, America's border is under siege, and it is a siege that this administration continues to encourage with each passing day.

They say it is not a crisis or an emergency, even as they have dispatched FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to help manage the disaster that they have created.

In February alone, the shortest month of the year, overwhelmed border patrol agents encountered more than 100,000 illegal aliens crossing our southern border, including 30,000 unaccompanied children and minors. And that does not include the countless illegal aliens that slipped through undetected.

Mr. Speaker, as many as 25 percent of the illegal aliens that the border patrol apprehends are testing positive for COVID--and not all are being tested.

Thanks to the administration's catch-and-release policies, many of these aliens immediately board buses and fan out across the country, making every State a border State. That includes my State in the far north, Wisconsin, because I hear it from sheriffs and law enforcement all over northern Wisconsin, especially the drugs that flow in, the fentanyl, the methamphetamines, that flow into our communities killing our citizens.

Drug seizures were up more than 50 percent last month driven by huge spikes in meth and heroin, deadly poisons that ravage our families. In what is fast becoming a Washington tradition, the other side has tried to pass the buck and blame the border disorder on the last administration.

This is a tired talking point; one we will hear repeated over and over to explain away the policy failures of the one-party government they control. But facts are stubborn things.

This tidal wave of drug and human trafficking is a direct result of White House promises of amnesty, and the rollback of the commonsense border security safeguards put in place by President Trump. That is why it began at the end of January.

So what is their answer to this crisis? It is to pour gasoline on the fire by passing two amnesty bills that will give legal status to at least half of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens already in this country, including criminal aliens who have been convicted of multiple DUIs, drug and weapons violations, and even voter fraud.

One of the bills even includes an unbelievable provision allowing for the reimportation of foreigners who were deported as long as 4 years ago, bringing them back and giving them green cards. This is a slap in the face to the legal immigrants who have followed our laws. This is a slap in the face to American taxpayers, millions of unemployed Americans, and countless American families who have lost loved ones to the scourge of drugs like meth and fentanyl.

Even worse, it is a financial bonanza for the human traffickers and foreign drug cartels who prey on the vulnerable and profit from their misery.

So let's get this straight. The first act of this President was to open the borders and close our schools, or make sure that they stay closed. The first act of this President was to open the borders, the pipeline that brings the drugs and the human trafficking into America, but they closed the pipeline that gives us energy independence in America.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for the administration to stop pretending that this crisis isn't happening, and to start defending the American people.

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