News From Our Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, since our last couple of floor periods, I had a chance to visit our southern border one more time, and I would like to point out what is going on there because I think it is the most important issue in America today.

So that our listeners understand, there are two classes of people who come to our border. There are people who are caught or deal with the Border Patrol--and a lot of people want to be found by the Border Patrol because they think they can come into this country through an asylum process--and there are other people who sneak across the border.

In April, our Border Patrol touched--or dealt with about 178,000 individuals. A year ago, that number was 17,000. So we have voluntarily gone up from having the Border Patrol deal with about 17,000 to 178,000.

As we deal with more people who are touched by the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol has to spend more time doing paperwork, particularly with the children.

We have another group of people coming across the border called get- aways. Because they are get-aways, nobody knows exactly how many there are. We do have drones. We do have our new wall together with sensors. And we are guessing right now that the number of get-aways has gone from about 10,000 a month a year ago to 30,000 a month.

We feel when you combine the two totals, we are going from about 10,000 a month people coming across our border to--just guessing--70- to 80,000 people a month crossing our border.

One thing I found at the border is that it is a misnomer to say most or all of these people are necessarily coming from Mexico or Central America. The last time I was down there, we looked at the three western sectors of the Mexican border. There are nine sectors. We looked at the San Diego, El Centro, and Yuma sectors.

In the San Diego sector, the second most common nationality coming across at the time we were down there was Russian. In the other two sectors, the most common nationality for quite a while had been Brazilian.

While I was there, we watched Border Patrol process a group of about 40 people coming across. They weren't even from one country. It was a group, and some of the people were from Russia, some were from Romania, some were from Cuba.

When we looked at the facilities the Border Patrol had down there, they had names of countries in--what else to call them--pens, where they were holding people. Sometimes a lot of people were kind of squished together.

Another country that people are commonly coming from was Ecuador. I said a lot of people are coming here from Cuba. We saw a large pen for people from India, though, to be honest, nobody was in it. But in any event, people are coming here from all around the world.

We also noticed at the border that the huge slats used to build the wall, which they had to cut short on, are apparently being stolen. Somebody paid for all these things that were supposed to be used to build a wall that was 30 feet high above the ground and 8 feet below the ground.

We cut short the building of that wall right when President Biden was sworn in. We already paid for the equipment. There was a lot of equipment used to put together the wall that had been rented. Apparently that money was wasted. Right now, the slats used for the wall are apparently being stolen at night by people who are selling them on the market.

One other observation about the wall: There has been an increase of traffic coming by boat in the San Diego area. And the reason the Border Patrol thinks that is true or the reason it is true is because of the effectiveness of the wall. Because the wall is doing a good job, people are more likely to get in a boat, go 20 miles out to sea and 20 miles back to come in.

The people who are let in this country pending an asylum hearing are put all over the country. They are frequently left with a nonprofit organization, perhaps the Catholic Social Services, and they find somewhere for them everywhere you look.

Another thing that you have to realize as things get worse with the wall is the number of drugs coming across the southern border. I had always wondered what would happen to the drug cartels as marijuana was legalized in the United States. One of the arguments for legalization of marijuana is it would weaken the drug cartels. Because they would no longer have to sneak the drugs across the border, that what would happen is that they would grow the marijuana in greenhouses here-- Colorado, Washington, where have you--and the drug gangs would dry up. Not so.

I recently heard an anecdote in which a lot of marijuana was shipped across the border, and they couldn't find anybody to sell it to because the quality of marijuana grown in America is superior to the marijuana grown in Mexico. Because it is no longer that profitable to ship marijuana across the border, what happens is there has been a dramatic increase in more severe drugs: heroin; cocaine; meth; and the worst of all, fentanyl.

We recently hit a new record in which we have had 90,000 deaths in a 12-month period in the United States. In Milwaukee County, of which I represent a part, there were 540 deaths last year. Milwaukee County is not big like Cook County or some of these other counties around here. It is about a million people. 540 deaths in Milwaukee County is a huge deal. For whatever reason, I think the press has underpublicized it.

I think one of the reasons for the big increases is because you are seeing more and more dangerous drugs coming across the southern border.

I would like to give a tip of the cap to the dogs that the Border Patrol uses at the border. When we were down there, we saw dogs who had detected fentanyl located in a gas tank. Of course, a gas tank smells so much, you figure there is no way that a dog could detect that because the smell of the gasoline is so strong. But even there, the dogs had detected it.

The thing is, the dogs could only sniff so many cars coming across. It would be a good idea if the Border Patrol would get more dogs.

In any event, if you want to talk about an underpublicized problem: 90,000 deaths in America last year from drug overdoses. At least at the drug administration in Milwaukee County, they speculated that the drugs that killed every one of the 540 people down there, either the drugs themselves or the ingredients for the drugs came across the southern border.

Now, you might say: Can we do anything to prevent this? Can we do anything to prevent there being 17,000 up to 178,000 contacts coming across the border? Yes.

Why did we not have a problem a little while ago, and what changed it?

First of all, President Trump had negotiated something called the migrant protection protocol in which people were held on the Mexican side of the border pending a hearing for asylum. Because of that, less people showed up in the first place. President Biden got rid of President Trump's agreement with Mexico to hold people at the southern border. First of all, more people are let in right away, and secondly, it advertises to prospective illegal immigrants around the world that now is the time to come.

Secondly, we had an asylum cooperative agreement with the Central American countries to hold people south of the Mexican border. In other words, if somebody wanted to come up from Venezuela and said, ``I need protection. I need asylum,'' they were held in Central American countries. Obviously, if they were concerned that they were being persecuted by the government, why would you have to come to the United States? It would be perfectly fine to stay in Guatemala, stay in El Salvador, wherever. That agreement was torn apart.

Finally, we changed the way we are dealing with COVID. Given the big deal we make about COVID, it is kind of surprising the Biden administration is letting people in without being tested for COVID, but they are.

Between these three things, we have managed to go to probably about 10,000 people who we don't want coming here a month to an unknown number, but probably 70,000 to 80,000.

I am afraid what will happen is that number will continue to grow. One of the reasons it is so much greater than it was in the past is because the gangs that help people get here charge people to come here. They charge $3,000 for a Mexican to cross the border, about $5,000 for a Central American. I am told $9,000 to $10,000 for a Brazilian.

Obviously, as it is easier to come here, the drug gangs will educate people in other countries and market in other countries to see if they can get here.

Other comments that I learned at the border: We already, in this fiscal year, have 6,000 arrests. That is over twice the amount we had in the entire last fiscal year. And these are for very serious crimes.

I also want to point out that usually you frequently only know if somebody has committed a crime or if somebody is a criminal if they committed a crime in this country. You don't know if they are coming here to escape from another country. So, we are letting an increased number of a criminal class in this country.

It is estimated that 33 percent of the women who come to this country, on their way up, as they walk through Mexico, are abused. Some of these women may find they have to pay the money they are supposed to give to the gangs by being trafficked, and that is a horrible thing. I don't know where these people are in this building who purport to be concerned about human trafficking, but one way women can pay their way, for their $5,000 or $8,000 or whatever, is obvious. The current system encourages that.

Another problem with it is when people cross the border, and it is a very mountainous border, whether you are in Arizona, whether you are in California, whether you are in New Mexico, you can wind up dehydrating to death. The drug gangs that show people how to get here do not take people necessarily all the way to civilization. They take them across the Mexican border, and they may say there is a town 10 miles that way or 15 miles that way. There may or may not be a town that close.

The Americans do put jugs of water out for people and hope they survive. But last year, in the Tucson sector alone, they found 100 people dehydrated to death, which is another problem that you have with this hodgepodge at the border.

Another problem that you find out is the children who come across the border, sometimes the children are people who are borrowed or rented or whatever from other people and are not related to the people who claim to be their parents or relatives in some fashion. Sometimes, we are able to identify that with DNA testing. Sometimes, we don't.

Children come up, maybe young children, even 7- or 8-year-old children, have fastened to their clothing who they are supposed to contact when they come here. The United States, under a bad court decision--in my opinion, a bad court decision--those children, rather than, say, being sent back to their parents in Honduras, may be sent to their supposed aunt or uncle in New York.

In the United States, when the children come to the border, they provide transportation to get those little kids to somewhere in the United States. The idea being that once one child comes here, eventually, the rest of the family is going to follow.

All the way across the board, we have a very dangerous situation. I implore the Biden administration to do something about this, and I implore the American public to get upset about this and demand that their Congressman does something.

I think the first thing we have to do is, of course, beg the Mexican Government to reinstate the migrant protection protocol, beg the Central American governments to reinstate the asylum cooperative agreements, and do what we can to immediately test for COVID the people coming across the border.

The next thing we have to do, Mr. President, is address the Vice President. The Vice President was appointed over 8 weeks ago now to be the czar for the southern border. I have been at the border three times this year. You do not know what is going on at the border unless you literally sit down, talk to the Border Patrol agents, talk to law enforcement of the counties that are on the border, talk to the ranchers who have to live with people crossing their land.

Clearly, Vice President Harris is not interested in finding these things out. I have made bad hires in my life. I have assigned people to jobs that maybe they couldn't do that well. I beg President Biden, who says he is a moderate, to find somebody else to be the border czar.

The current situation in which we have the number of people let in this country rocketing up is just unacceptable. If Ms. Harris, or Vice President Harris, can go 8 weeks without visiting the border, it clearly shows that she is insubordinate, is not interested in doing a good job. There must be somebody else in the Biden administration who can pick up the slack and express some interest in closing our border.

I should digress and point out that this does not mean we are anti- immigration. In 2019, almost 850,000 new citizens were sworn in, in this country. There are work visas, as well. There are plenty of ways to come into this country legally, but we do not need this massive sea of people coming here illegally.

Again, I implore the American public. When we see the Border Patrol touch 178,000 people a month, that is unacceptable. When we talk about 30,000 getaways, that is not acceptable. The numbers are going to continue to spiral up as we have had public comments from both the President and Vice President that indicate they are not interested in enforcing our laws.

Now I would like to touch briefly on another crisis that I hope the American public expresses their concern about during our 3-week recess.

There have always been people trying to destroy America. And America is such a hope for people all around the world, both our example and the fact that we do have many immigrants coming here. There have been various ideologies which have been used to overthrow our government, or change our government so it is no longer in accordance with our Constitution.

John Adams said our Constitution is fit for a moral and religious people and not fit for anyone else.

There was a time when Marxists traditionally felt they could destabilize the American population and that way have a rebellion in the United States. Eventually, they gave up hope on traditional Marxism, or at least gave up hope for a while.

The reason they gave up hope is, quite frankly, the American middle class was so prosperous. And in America you could find just by going to work, working hard, saving some money, you could buy a house bigger than what you would find in any other country. And as a result, the lure of Marxism, which took over in China--albeit with some mistakes made by the American Government--which took over in Russia, which took over in Cambodia, resulting in maybe over 100 million deaths of Marxists caused in other countries, not to mention the destruction of the churches, the destruction of the family. That failed.

More recently, the left-wingers in our university system has taken it upon themselves to talk about critical race theory. Now under classic Marxism, they try to take over by educating the American public that they should be bitter and angry, and they should want to revolt so that they could own the factories or own the big houses, and have a revolution that way.

The new effort is to try to create anger based on race, and they call it critical race theory. And they want to tell people that if you don't have all you have, it must be because of racism. If you don't have the nice house you want, if you don't have a big amount in your savings account, or whatever, that is the problem.

Recently, I ran into a little bit of what I will call critical race theory in one of my local high schools. In the high school, a teacher educated a class, which was devoted to racism, mentioned that in the past year, 4 percent of the kids in this high school were Black, and 20 percent of the kids who were arrested were Black. The teacher told the kids, of course, or implied to the kids that this was the result of racism.

There is a problem twice. First of all, you are educating people in the United States of America, which we have just covered, the whole rest of the world wants to get in here. You are educating kids that America is not worth preserving, America is not worth fighting for, America is a bad country.

Secondly, you educate people that if they are arrested for drugs, for fighting, what have you, or if the police interact with you, it is not a matter of you did something wrong, it is a matter of racism.

I can't think of any clearer way to make sure that people do not progress in our system than telling them that if they do something wrong, the punishment was not because they deserve the punishment, it was because of racism. But this is the mindset that is out there right now in our schools. It is the mindset that is out there in our large businesses and in our military.

I think people have to educate themselves as to what critical race theory is, because clearly, the goal of critical race theory is to make people not proud or not respect the United States and, furthermore, make people bitter and angry, and tell people rather than work hard-- you work 45-50 hours a week, try to afford a house, try to have children, buy a car--it tells people if you don't have all you want, it is because of racism.

And there is no way teaching our young people that is going to lead to anything other than resentment and a great deal of unhappiness. I think it is obvious that America does not have the racist problems that other countries have. And I beg people to read about countries like India, countries like Somalia, where minor ethnic differences result in deaths, huge amounts of discrimination.

Here in the United States, in recent years, Asians, and before that, many other different so-called minority groups outdid financially-- finances aren't everything--but financially exceeded the native-born.

We can see that America is not a racist country because I talked about, a second ago, people from all around the world are trying to get in here, and almost nobody ever wants to leave. So when it really comes to saying it is bad, no one wants to leave, but the whole rest of the world tries to come here, be it from Africa, be it from Latin America, be it from the Indian subcontinent, be it from Southeast Asia.

So many wonderful people come here. My district has a lot of Hmong who are tremendously successful, despite coming from a very different background, loving America, taking full advantage of the opportunities that are there.

However, if we let this pernicious ideology get in our schools and get in our businesses, it will be a success for the left-wing groups that have always wanted to destroy the special country that is America.

And I encourage parents and grandparents and employees to report or publicize when they are forced to put up with this stuff in the schools or in the businesses.

There is something for our wonderful American listeners to deal with over the next 3 weeks.

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