Democrats' Plan to Put Mass Amnesty in Reconciliation Package

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman (Mr. Babin), my colleague on the House Border Security Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, you have heard a lot about numbers today. I want to just tell you a little bit about some of the faces and individuals. I have been from the Rio Grande Valley to San Diego, and back again, this year. I get down to the border incredibly often; just down again last week, down two weeks before that, down a few weeks before that. And that is kind of way I live, because I live in Arizona and it is affected and it is impacted.

I was down in RGV, the Rio Grande Valley, and you can go there in the area of La Jolla. And you sit at the river, the Rio Grande River runs, and you can go and you wait--this little fork in the road. We parked the car. I had a CBP agent with me, had a couple Members of Congress. It is nighttime. We are looking out and we see about 40 people literally emerging from the river. They are dressed great.

But you know what? Most of them are kids under age 14, I would guess. A little girl 7 years old, she is with her brother, 5. There is no mom. There is no dad. There is no aunt or uncle. There is no one there to take care of them. The coyote brought them across the river and deposited them.

Do you know what would happen in the United States for us who are citizens, who are legally here, if we had a 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-year-old child and we put that child in the hands of a criminally-violent person? That is what a coyote is; they are working for the cartels. And we sewed into their britches a name and a phone number, or a city. We put that child there; and then we were up in Detroit, or LA, or Phoenix. And that coyote, the person we gave that child to, then turned the child over to the Border Patrol to reunite with us.

Upon reunification, we would be charged with child abuse. But our government is the logistics arm of the cartel, and we don't do that. We reunite that child and we allow that mom and that child to remain in the United States of America and we don't bring criminal charges. And we don't remove from this country. Instead, we release with all the benefits of our social welfare safety net, our education system, our healthcare, the free phones, the housing--all of that. That is what we do.

And down in Yuma, just recently, how about this, I am standing there with some of my friends. We are standing literally next to the fence. But the fence ends, and there is a space of several hundred yards. And literally, we are getting pictures of us standing in front of this hole in the fence.

Here comes a fellow. He is walking up, and so we stop and talk to him.

Where are you from? Cuba. Where were you before that? I came from Russia. I went from Cuba to Russian and then I went to Spain and then to France and then to Mexico City, and then I got myself to Mexicali. I took a bus from Mexicali to Yuma--actually, Los Algodones, which is right across the border, and he walks dry across the dregs of that point of the Colorado River.

I say: What are you doing here? I want to be in America. He wanted to be an American.

We say: Well, why don't you sit right here? There is water. There is a station where you can clean yourself up a little bit. Border Patrol is going to be along in just a second.

That person is not an economic refugee. There is no credible fear. He is traveling and wants to come to the United States of America.

Do you know what is going to happen to him if they don't title 42 him, which they are not doing many title 42s anymore? He is probably already in the country somewhere. That is where that fellow is. He was an engaging fellow, but, nonetheless, illegally in this country.

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