Crisis At the Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert), and I thank all colleagues from the House Freedom Caucus for joining me here on the floor.

I thank my friend from Virginia, who joined me down in Del Rio, Texas, just a month ago, where we saw firsthand what is actually happening in real-time on the border, something that we know and, unfortunately, my colleagues on this side of the aisle refuse to acknowledge and refuse to do anything about.

Now, as you all know, one of our Freedom Caucus colleagues from New Mexico (Ms. Herrell) filed, 14 months ago, a piece of legislation to require that title 42 be enforced at our border.

For those listening at home, title 42 is our power as a country to stop communicable diseases and people with communicable diseases from coming across our border. It is an important tool that President Trump and his administration put in place in the last year of his administration to ensure that we stop the flow of people across the border from inundating and overwhelming Border Patrol.

We knew this was coming. Fourteen months ago, we knew this was coming. A year ago, we came together. I filed a discharge petition as part of this team to say that we can force a vote on the floor of the House.

Well, the Speaker of the House refuses to bring to a vote a measure to enforce title 42. Everybody listening at home, the Speaker of the House, who has control of the floor, refuses to bring forward a vote on title 42 to require enforcement of the border. We are trying to change that.

We have almost every single Republican, I think save one, who has filed that, 210 signatures. We need 218. Where are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle? Where are those from border States?

Mr. Speaker, we have zero Democrats on that title 42 discharge position.

Now, as the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert) noted, there are at least four noteworthy United States Senators who are Democrats who said we should not end title 42: Mr. Tester, Mr. Manchin, Ms. Sinema, and Mr. Kelly. Those four Senators have said we should not end title 42.

Now, I will wrap up and pass it to someone else just to say this: How many dead migrants is enough? How many dead Americans from fentanyl poisoning is enough? How much money in the pockets of dangerous cartels is enough? How many bullets need to fly at the border? How many homes need to be destroyed? How many cars need to be wrecked?

How many DPS agents need to be killed or endangered? How many people need to be harmed before this administration will do its job? How many criminals need to be let off in the United States and not prosecuted under ICE? When are we going to change this and actually secure our country?

Those are my questions for Secretary Mayorkas.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my fellow border Stater being down here. You hold those Mounties back up there, okay? Keep them at bay.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would only add that I have seen some reports that there are a number of Democrats in the Senate joining with Republicans in the Senate to try to do something about this. I hope that is true.

But my little warning to that is, I keep hearing words about, well, let's keep title 42 in place until we see a plan. Look, I don't want one of these plans full of words, okay? I want the border secure. I want title 42 enforced. That ought to be the metric that we are gauging everything by.

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