Relating to the Consideration of House Report and An Accompanying Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. 471, the PAUSE Act, to protect all Americans from Biden's border crisis.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the previous question. The gentleman from Maryland, my friend, raised some issues about saying that we are wasting time when we have stunts, he called them, I think, or I am paraphrasing.

So here I am, and I am going to be talking about an important issue which, I assume, might be labeled as a stunt, to say that I oppose the previous question because there is something for me that is so critical and so existential to the people I represent in the State of Texas and to the people across this country, which is the decision by the CDC, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, and the President of the United States, to end title 42 enforcement on the border of the United States.

Now, our mutual colleague and friend who was in the chair, and the Speaker from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, who is on the Judiciary Committee, raised the issue about the imminent harm that may befall us because of the continued and new strains of COVID in April.

Well, if that is true, why would the CDC say that we should stop enforcement of title 42 at our border?

We have 8,000 people a day coming across the border of the United States and being apprehended; 8,000. Half of those are being turned away under title 42. The estimates by Border Patrol experts are that those numbers will swell to over 10,000, maybe as high as 15 to 18,000, when you get to the summer months.

And when that happens, and you stop enforcing title 42, then all of those individuals will be released into the United States.

That is a major problem because it is not just the numbers themselves; it is the consequences. When Border Patrol is processing individuals because of the failed policies of the administration, it means that you have, as we saw last year, half a million people who were known got-aways because Border Patrol is now at the locations to process individuals.

Then you have known got-aways, which means you have massive numbers of people coming here with criminal records from places all over the world, 150 to 160 countries, including dangerous individuals from known terrorist states.

The point here is that we have legislation for this body, the people's House, to require title 42 to be enforced. Yvette Herrell, my colleague from New Mexico, introduced that last February. I filed a discharge petition for that bill last April because, for the people watching at home, the Speaker of the House controls the floor, and my Democratic colleagues control the floor. The only way we have power to change that is through a discharge petition. We have 211 signatures. We have all Republicans, I think save maybe one, who have signed the discharge petition.

We are asking our Democratic colleagues to join us in defense of the United States to call up this discharge petition so we can have a debate on title 42 and securing the border of the United States, which is what that conga line was all about: trying to protect our country.

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