Crisis At Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I was standing next to many piles--I couldn't even fit them into the camera shot--of bollard fencing panels taller than me, $2 million worth of those bollard fences right there.

A little further down from where we were, there is another set of bollard fencing, but they aren't welded together yet. They are not panels yet. They are getting stolen, by the way.

Where we were was by the temporary headquarters of the contractors who were there to put up the fence. You know what? They keep going to work every day. You know why they keep going to work every day? They got a contract, and they are getting paid to go there. But they can't put the fence up because President Biden says you can't put the fence up.

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Mr. BIGGS. That is exactly right. Think about this, too. It is inhumane, right, because we entice people to come here, and we know that the cartels, they control. I can't emphasize this enough. I was startled when I heard this. The cartels control every person coming across the border.

Let me tell you what that fellow from Cuba, the Cuban national, said to me. He said: Look, I will wait here for the Border Patrol to come pick me up. Will I be molested while I wait?

Think of that. What kind of country are we that we entice people to come here, and they put themselves in the hands of some of the most ruthless criminal gangsters ever.

There are two internecine wars going on between the Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel right now. The brutality is phenomenal. It helps you to know that they are not humane. These people that are coming over are paying $700 in the Haitian group, most $4,000 to $7,000. They are putting their lives in the hands of these very violent criminals.

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Mr. BIGGS. That is correct. We have seen it all along the border, whether it is Arizona, Texas, the New Mexico boot, California. The heat is so great, except for right there at San Diego, but it is even hot there. When it gets 120 degrees in the desert and they are coming across, they got one gallon of water that they got somewhere along the pike, and that is it. It is unrelenting, unremitting heat. We see this.

Here is another question. You got it in Del Rio?

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Mr. BIGGS. And that was not organic?

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Mr. BIGGS. It was organized. It was organized.

Down in southern Mexico right now, you have a group of 95,000-plus forming up, mostly Haitians forming up, waiting. They have announced that this Sunday is their departure date. We think a good share is going to go to Yuma this time because we have a 7-mile gap in our fencing down there.

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Mr. BIGGS. I agree with you 100 percent. If they would enforce our law, we wouldn't need to be standing here. We had the Attorney General today come in.

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Mr. BIGGS. We asked him some pointed questions. How many prosecutions? Is it still illegal? Yes, it is still illegal to come into the country.

Are you prosecuting anybody? Well, I suspect the answer is, no, they are not prosecuting anybody, but they are not detaining anybody either. The law, under title 8, says you must detain unless there is some legal exemption from detention.

The vast majority that are coming across, the Haitians--we heard about 10,000 to 12,000 that Secretary Mayorkas admitted to. They only removed 2,000, and the real number was between 26,000 and 30,000 that actually flowed through Del Rio, Mr. Roy.

What happened to the other 20-some-odd thousand? Well, they are now released into the interior of the United States of America. That is what is happening. This catch and release program is another contravention of our law.

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Mr. BIGGS. When you say that, I am reminded of the surge of 2019. That surge in 2019 happened. I know you went down to the border multiple times.

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Mr. BIGGS. I went down to the border multiple times. I took codels down to the border so folks could see how bad it was. That was my President.

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Mr. BIGGS. You know what? He was trying to enact policies to stop that. They brought lawsuits to prevent stopping that.

Now that their administration has basically adopted an open borders policy, a dangerous policy for the people coming across, a national security issue for us, a national security threat for us, it is crickets?

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Mr. BIGGS. There are several. Title 42 came along a little bit later, though. The most effective were the remain in Mexico policy and the agreements with the Northern Triangle states. There were no incentives in these care packages that came along of $1,400 every time anybody came in illegally.

He started building the fence. He stopped the catch and release. He ramped up the due process speed. He tried to get those folks with the false asylum claims in, get them due process, and get them removed. He was actually removing people who had removal orders.

We got 1.2 million people who had due process with removal orders in this country today, and this administration has told the ICE officers: Don't go out and find them. Don't enforce those removals.

Those policies were actually working, and title 42 when that came in, that finished it off.

But do you know what you had most of all, Mr. Speaker?

You had a President who said: Do not come, you are not welcome.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, when you think about it, in 2018 we swore in 830,000 new U.S. citizens. In 2019 it was about 800,000. That is kind of where it sits every year.

I had a young man who worked for me; his family were immigrants from Mexico. Thirteen years it took for them to get citizenship--13 years. And if they would have crossed the border illegally with the current Democrat plan, they would have gotten amnesty.

Mr. Speaker, think about that. Good friends of ours, our neighbors, same situation, 12, 14 years to get citizenship.

And do you know what, Mr. Speaker? I have to get back to this caravan that is coming up.

Mr. Speaker, what do you think 95,000 people will do to a town of Del Rio's size, which I think is 30,000, 36,000, something like that; or Yuma which is a town the size of 80,000; or how about the town of Douglass; or Naco, about 3,000; or Douglass, about 15,000?

What happens when they come in there?

We don't have facilities. They get processed and released. That is what happens.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is right, 100 percent. Mr. Speaker, think about the drug trafficking right now. When the cartels want to bring in drugs, they flood a zone. Del Rio, they put all the Haitians there.

Mr. Speaker, 224 miles of border went unprotected--unprotected--for 8 days. They had cameras, but they didn't have any bodies to go arrest these people bringing the drugs in. We have got places in Arizona for 62 miles with absolutely the only fencing being a vehicle barrier. We have got people coming in who are going through mountains.

We have mountains filled with scouts watching and telling these drug carriers where they are coming in. They come on up, they pop out on Interstate 8 and the intersection of Interstate 10 just south of Phoenix. It is the number one drug trafficking corridor in the country. They spit this stuff out all over the country, and now they are moving into pills. They are moving into pills, counterfeit pills, and we have no idea--they are made by some dude down in a garage.

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Mr. BIGGS. Just on that, I have got to comment on this because when the gentleman said he had an American citizen, the driver, as an employee of the cartel, we see that all up and down the border, and they want to get youth to do it as well because they are not going to be prosecuted.

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Mr. BIGGS. They are recruiting youth because they are not going to be prosecuted as adults. They are going to get off easier.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I agree 100 percent. We have other places where the employees are fighting back. You have got the Chicago police union. God bless them.

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Mr. BIGGS. Guess what is happening, Mr. Speaker?

The mayor there is trying to put pressure on them.

Guess what, Mr. Speaker? Indiana cities are offering jobs to those Chicago police officers. If they come here, we are not going to mandate that.

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Mr. BIGGS. That is what you are seeing, Mr. Speaker. I just got a tweet just 20 minutes ago, 30 minutes ago. We are seeing one of our big companies, one of my big defense contractors in Arizona had an employee walkout today. They don't want this.

Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? If you want a vaccine, go ahead and get the vaccine.

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Mr. BIGGS. But doggone it, it should not be mandated by a tyrannical government. And this is the tip of the spear on a fascist-style government, in my opinion.

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Mr. BIGGS. Amen. People say, looking around, they get so depressed and frustrated when they see the horrible and horrific impacts of the policies coming out of this administration, not the least of which is the curtailing of their freedoms.

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Mr. BIGGS. The gentleman from Texas talks and reminds us of all of this, and we are seeing it. Like my friend, I keep a folder in my computer of story after story of people fighting back saying: No. We are not going to kowtow; we are not going to bow down to this tyranny.

It gives me hope, and it gives us the optimism to carry on and keep up the fight because this country was born on freedom, and it is going to continue. We will see a comeback of freedom.

Like Ronald Reagan said, it may not be in your genes, but you have to fight it. For every generation it is a new fight to keep freedom, and this is our fight today.

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Mr. BIGGS. One of the only good things about the COVID outbreak was that parents got to see what the kids were learning for a change, and when they saw it, they said: This is not what I want my kid to learn. And they started standing up.

Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? It is working.

But do you know what is happening?

Right now, we have got an Attorney General who has basically said: We are going to stop those protests, we are going to stop that communication that is First Amendment messaging that you give as parents to the school boards.

That is not the American way. That is the tyranny, and that is the fascism we are fighting about. That is what you and I were fighting with the Attorney General today about. And doggone it, we have got to stand up, and those parents need to be able to stand up, express themselves, and express their protest.

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Mr. BIGGS. That is where it is. That is where the fire is starting, right there at the level of the people.

And if we are going to save this country--I tell people all the time--it is going to come from the grassroots. It is going to come from the people. It is going to take off into the local jurisdictions in the States.

If you think that you are going to save this Nation with the United States Congress, you are sadly mistaken. It is the States. It is the individuals. It is the families. It is the people who love this country, and they are going to keep fighting us back. I am with you 100 percent on that.

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