Addressing the Border Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the Biden border crisis, the unraveling of what was once a managed situation.

We are a compassionate Nation, but lawlessness is not compassion. Aiding and abetting cartels is not compassion. Putting policies in place that allow evil actors to abuse women on a journey is not compassion. Allowing them to grow and be funded into a destabilizing force in Central and South American nations that are trying to thrive and survive and create an economy for their own people, that is not compassion.

The policies that the Biden administration has put in place have caused this crisis at the border. It is different from the previous administration that came in, inherited a problem and had to put policies in place and make difficult decisions to come up with a solution. This administration inherited a solution and has put in place policies that have created a problem.

It was predictable. It was easy to avoid. It is unfortunate that we have to be here again to talk about this today, but we are here because the lives of those affected matter. They deserve it. They need their story to be told.

It is ironic that we are taking people off the border right now, our good men and women who signed up to protect and secure our border, to defend the Constitution, and to protect our communities. We are actually taking them off the border to sit at computers to do paperwork to process what has become a migrant humanitarian crisis.

We have essentially turned our brave men and women into the last mile, so to speak, for cartel activity. The business model that the cartels have to work throughout the world to bring people to our border, to charge them thousands of dollars each while they abuse them on the journey, while they put them into indentured servitude and then hand them over to our people simply for processing. That is not what they signed up to do.

The migrants deserve better as well, as do, certainly, our communities. We understand the strategy of the cartels to overwhelm our border and our resources with the humanitarian crisis and then sneak in drugs that destroy the lives of our young people and our families.

We have to fix this. We can secure our border. We can protect the lives of these people, and we can keep this Nation strong. We can help push back the cartel influence in our Nation and throughout Central and South America.

I have a couple of fellow Members of Congress and friends here who have valuable experience. I thank them for joining me today to help us with this conversation.

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Mr. CLOUD. I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Miller).
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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Posey for his comments. It is interesting of him to point out the former ``Remain in Mexico'' policy that was removed under this administration. Ironically, if you are a U.S. citizen going to Mexico, you will have to remain in Mexico and not be allowed into our very own home country unless you have a negative COVID test. However, this is not happening with the migrants at the border currently.

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Gosar for his remarks.
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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

Indeed, it is true that these cartels have a weird, perverted thinking when it comes to people. For them, they are just a business product. In their mind, they can sell a kilo of coke once, but they can get residual income from a human life.

It is pathetic, disturbing, troubling, to say the least, that we, by our policies, empower this kind of activity on our southern border.

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Boebert for her remarks.

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, we are indeed a compassionate Nation, we recognize that everyone on this planet are people created in the image of God. We understand that people are hurting all over the world.

The solution for that, however, is for us to be that shining city on the hill, for us to be an example to the world. For them to know that if you live by the same principles that have made this Nation into one of the brightest beacons of freedom through all of human history that you can achieve the same results.

We want people to prosper everywhere. We want every nation to prosper, and that is why we are so intent on stopping this terrible scourge that is at our southern border. These cartels are wreaking havoc in the lives of these people, and we have to put an end to this.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article titled ``Color-Coded Passage: Why Smugglers are Tagging U.S.-Bound Migrants with Wristbands.''

It has recently come to light that a number of the migrants are coming over with wristbands. The question was asked, Why? [From Reuters, Mar. 9, 2021] Color-Coded Passage: Why Smugglers Are Tagging U.S.-Bound Migrants With Wristbands (By Adrees Latif, Laura Gottesdiener, Mica Rosenberg)

Penitas, TX.--Along the banks of the Rio Grande in the scrubby grassland near Penitas, Texas, hundreds of colored plastic wristbands ripped off by migrants litter the ground, signs of what U.S. border officials say is a growing trend among powerful drug cartels and smugglers to track people paying to cross illegally into the United States.

The plastic bands--red, blue, green, white--some labeled arrivals or entries in Spanish, are discarded after migrants cross the river on makeshift rafts, according to a Reuters witness. Their use has not been widely reported before.

Some migrants are trying to evade border agents, others are mostly Central American families or young children traveling without parents who turn themselves into officials, often to seek asylum.

Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector, which spans more than 34,000 square miles (88,000 square kilometers) along the border in southeast Texas, have recently encountered immigrants wearing the bracelets during several apprehensions, said Matthew Dyman a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The ``information on the bracelets represents a multitude of data that is used by smuggling organizations, such as payment status or affiliation with smuggling groups,'' Dyman told Reuters.

The differing smuggling techniques come as Democratic President Joe Biden's administration has sought to reverse restrictive immigration polices set up by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. But a recent jump in border crossings has Republicans warning the easing of hardline policies will lead to an immigration crisis.

U.S. border agents carried out nearly 100,000 apprehensions or rapid expulsions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, according to two people familiar with preliminary figures, the highest monthly total since mid-2019. PURPLE BRACELET

``They run it like a business,'' said Cardinal Brown, which means ``finding more patrons and looking for efficiencies.'' Migrants can pay thousands of dollars for the journey to the United States and human smugglers have to pay off drug cartels to move people through parts of Mexico.

``This is a money-making operation and they have to pay close attention to who has paid,'' she said. ``This may be a new way to keep track.''

Criminal groups operating in northern Mexico, however, have long used systems to log which migrants have already paid for the right to be in gang-controlled territory, as well as for the right to cross the border into the United States, migration experts said.

A migrant in Reynosa--one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico across the border from McAllen, Texas--who declined to give his name for fear of retaliation, showed Reuters a picture of a purple wristband he was wearing.

He said he paid $500 to one of the criminal groups in the city after he arrived a few months ago from Honduras to secure the purple bracelet to protect against kidnapping or extortion. He said once migrants or their smugglers have paid for the right to cross the river, which is also controlled by criminal groups, they receive another bracelet.

``This way we're not in danger, neither us nor the `coyote,' '' he said, using the Spanish word for smuggler.

One human smuggler who spoke on conditions of anonymity, confirmed the bracelets were a system to designate who has paid for the right to transit through cartel territory.

``They are putting these (bracelets) on so there aren't killings by mistake,'' he said.

Migrants and smugglers say the use of bracelets to designate who has paid for the right to cross the river is a system required by the cartels that control waterfront territory in the conflict-ridden state of Tamaulipas.

In January, a group of migrants were massacred in Tamaulipas state just 40 miles (70 km) west of Reynosa. Twelve local Mexican police have been arrested in connection with the massacre.

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, a migrant in Reynosa said this: ``He paid one of the criminal groups in the city after he arrived a few months ago from Honduras to secure the purple bracelet to protect against kidnapping and extortion.''

``He said once migrants or their smugglers have paid for the right to cross the river, which is also controlled by criminal groups, they receive another bracelet.''

So basically, cartels are going throughout, they are recruiting people to come, charging them thousands of dollars. At each step along the way they have to pay another fee to get across the territory that is controlled by cartels.

One human smuggler who spoke up, of course, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the bracelets were a system to designate who was paid for the right to transit through cartel territory. And this is what he said: ``They are putting these bracelets on so there aren't killings by mistake.''

This is what we are allowing, and it is tragic. We can do better than this.

We can mitigate the influence that the cartels are having at our border, and communities throughout my State, in particular, in Texas, and throughout our Nation. We can mitigate this humanitarian and this national security crisis, and I encourage the White House to do so, and for this House to take up legislation to secure our border as well.

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