Southern Border Issues
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding. We will continue to engage in that.
With the permission of the gentleman from Wisconsin, I ask that he also yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good) to engage in a colloquy.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time from the gentleman from Wisconsin and his commitment to fighting to change this town, which, unfortunately, too many of our colleagues are unwilling to do. I am glad to have my friend from Virginia here as well.
Yesterday, we had an interesting exchange in the House Judiciary Committee. We had a number of different conversations about the issue of the ongoing threat at our border. I know that my friend from Virginia was also here on the floor of the House last night, where we had a continued conversation about the ongoing threat at the southern border of the United States.
I would imagine that the people who I represent, and the people of the State of Texas, would be horrified if they all got to see what I see every day and the exchange with my colleagues here in this body about what is actually happening at our border. What do I mean by that?
Yesterday, I had an exchange with the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee because I was acknowledging, in the context of a debate we were having about opening up visa waivers for the United States Virgin Islands, that those kinds of waivers had been abused in Guam and other territories of the United States. We were questioning why we are going to open up these waivers while our border is wide open.
I pointed out the abuses that are happening at our border and the abuses that are happening in Texas. I specifically talked about the sexual abuses, the rapes, and the tragedy of what is occurring to little girls and to people on the journey, in particular in Texas when they cross the southern border because they are at the hands of the dangerous cartels.
I said this at the time, that the committee chairman kind of scoffed. It wasn't the first time I had seen some of our colleagues scoff with respect to the perspectives that we are offering about what we see every day and the conversations we have with people on the ground.
Why I think it merits conversation here on the floor of the House is--and I want to get the gentleman from Virginia's perspective on this--on behalf of the American people who we represent, the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the people of the State of Texas, the many people we represent, we are trying to articulate, for a body of representatives of those people, that their lives are being impacted and harmed by virtue of the refusal of this administration and, frankly, many of the people of this Chamber to secure the border of the United States.
In very short outline form, it comes in the form of empowered cartels, dangerous individuals crossing our border, be they criminals, be they terrorist members, or be they folks from state-sponsors of terror.
It comes in the form of dangerous fentanyl and narcotics coming into our communities, poisoning our families, poisoning our young, killing people in schools.
It comes in the form of physical property damage to ranchers, business owners, and people dealing with the dangerous flow coming across the border.
It comes in the form of economic impacts and devastation.
It comes in the form of, for example, the town of Uvalde, Texas, where you have 100 a day being dropped off. They have to deal with: What do we do? Do we ship them to San Antonio? What do we do with our schools? What do we do with our hospitals?
It comes in the form of danger because Border Patrol can't monitor the border, and people come in, known got-aways.
It comes in the form of having criminals that exist in the United States that aren't being prosecuted because, allegedly, we don't have bed space, but really, we are not allowing ICE to do its job. You had, for example, 25,000 prosecutions last year as opposed to something like 250,000 at the peak of the Trump administration.
Madam Speaker, I could go on and on and on. My point is, there is a direct consequence and direct harm to the American people: dead Americans, dead migrants, fentanyl pouring in, increased substance abuse, empowerment of cartels, empowerment of China. This is happening on a daily basis and getting worse.
Finally, now we are being told, even as the Speaker of the House has COVID--if you look at the top stories in Politico, oh, my gosh, everybody is running around. There are COVID-positive people in D.C.
Even as all of that is occurring, even as the extension of the proxy voting fraud that is occurring in the House of Representatives--by ``fraud,'' I mean that half of this body, or more, is signing up and standing up at this podium every day, saying, ``I am not voting because of COVID,'' signing documentation, and we know the vast majority has nothing to do with COVID.
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Mr. ROY. Well, I never have proxy-voted.
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Mr. ROY. There is some sort of form, and you sign the form. In that language, you say, ``due to the COVID emergency,'' or something to that effect. I don't want to misrepresent the exact legal language. ``Due to the COVID emergency, I cannot be here to vote, so I am allowing so-and- so colleague to vote for me.''
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Mr. ROY. Given that we have lines and lines of people voting by proxy, given that we have the Speaker of the House having COVID, given that Politico is writing stories about how COVID is impacting the swamp, given that you have to wear a mask on airplanes, given that we are continuing to require members of our military to get a needle stuck in their arm or potentially lose their job, given that we are continuing to require among Federal workers like Border Patrol that they get a needle in their arm or lose their job, then comes along the infinite wisdom of the CDC director and the head of DHS, Secretary Mayorkas, oh, let's get rid of title 42, literally the only thing that is actually being used to enforce the border and stop half the flow of people coming across our border.
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Mr. ROY. Is the gentleman aware of this?
Did we take a trip together to Del Rio, Texas, a month ago?
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Mr. ROY. Does the gentleman remember that we stood at the river in Del Rio, and we were there at the spot where many thousands of Haitians had crossed last September? Does the gentleman remember that?
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Mr. ROY. Is the gentleman aware of whether or not the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or, for example, the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki--quickly en route to a deal with MSNBC-- President Biden, or any other member of the administration who went to the microphone and accused Border Patrol agents--lifetime public servants serving on our border--of whipping human beings in the river; is the gentleman aware of any of those individuals apologizing to them and ensuring that they have been reposted in their jobs on horseback in Del Rio?
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Mr. ROY. To make sure the Record is clear, I think the gentleman from Virginia is correct that neither the President nor the Vice President have been to the border in what I would call the spots where it matters.
I believe the Vice President of the United States did take a trip where she hopped through El Paso, met with a number of folks away from the border, went to the border for a quick photo, went back to El Paso, and hopped on a plane en route to California. I believe that transpired some time last year.
But never to Del Rio, never meeting with people right down on the river, never down to McAllen, never to Laredo, never talked to any of the people being affected directly by what is occurring at the border. Neither the so-called border czar--the Vice President--nor the President of the United States have been to the border.
To be clear, the Secretary of Homeland Security has only been there, I think, a couple of times. And when attending I do not believe he was received particularly well by the line Border Patrol.
Does the gentleman agree?
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Mr. ROY. I appreciate the observation by my friend from Virginia about what the Governor of Texas is having to do to stand in the breach and to stand up in order to protect Texans in the complete and total absence of the Federal Government to do its constitutional duties: to defend the sovereign Nation and to deal with immigration which he refuses to do.
I would note that the Governor and the legislature has appropriated $3 billion in Texas. I don't know when we are going to get that paid back by this august institution when Texas is doing the job of the Federal Government, but, okay, we are a border State. Texas funded $3 billion, and we have used that to take our DPS agents and DPS troopers and move them down to the border to be able to back up Border Patrol. As the gentleman knows from our experience down there in meeting with DPS, he has been engaging in policy and building fences and other stuff, and now he is engaging in a policy shift where there is going to be some action with respect to vehicle inspections at ports of entry. I applaud that.
I would note that I would go so far as to say, I would support the Governor shutting down I-35.
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Mr. ROY. I would just shut down the port of entry. I would look at the rest of America and my colleagues around this Chamber and say, Do you like your cheap goods from Mexico right now when we have got high inflation and we want to go attack China?
Guess what?
I-35 is shut down--shut down--until you secure the border of the United States.
But I appreciate that the Governor's step is a step in that direction to say, We are going to have vehicle inspections.
I hope they are long, slow vehicle inspections. I hope they cover every car from beginning to end and take plenty of time doing it.
Secondly, using boats and having some sort of ability to deter crossing, there was some plan to do that, I haven't read the details of it. I hope it is sincere and robust.
And then the third part is what the gentleman from Virginia mentioned, taking some of these who are dumped off by Border Patrol in Texas, putting them on a bus, and shipping them to the front door of this building. I support that.
There are a couple of caveats. There is one metric, and one metric alone, that I will hold everybody in this Chamber accountable to, the Governor of Texas accountable to, and the President of the United States accountable to: Stop the flow now. That is your job. That is your duty under the Constitution. That is what the law requires you to do.
That is why we have the Secure Fence Act. That is why we have laws on the books requiring you to follow the legal processes.
Do not allow the false name of asylum and compassion to be used as a rule to swallow the constitutional duty to secure the border.
I would give the same speech to the Governor and to my colleagues in the legislature in Texas: You have a duty to the people of Texas to secure the border under Article 4. There is an invasion, and the Federal Government is not doing its job. You have a duty to hold that line.
So that is the metric by which we should grade the actions of the Governor, the actions of this body, or the actions of the President.
I will see if the gentleman would agree.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my friend from Virginia pointing this out.
Let me note that we are sitting here on April, I believe, 7-- actually, it is a couple of good friends of mine birthday. I am just glad I said that out loud.
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Mr. ROY. I will not mention that these two guys happen to be known publicly. They are a couple of twins who are good buddies of mine and their birthday is today.
But I sit here, and I say on April 7, it was a year ago almost to the day--I would have to go look at the date of the filing of our discharge petition down at the desk here in the Chamber--that I filed on behalf of us who wanted to do it.
Our friend Yvette Herrell had legislation to require the enforcement of title 42, the health provision that allows you to turn people away because of communicable diseases which, of course, we are dealing with during COVID. She had a bill that she filed last February. Now, keep in mind, that was only a month into the administration. But we knew full well what was happening because immigrants were showing up to the border with Joe Biden T-shirts and with ``thank you to President Joe Biden'' shirts. So we knew what was coming. We knew that the Members of this Chamber and Democrat friends in the administration would say: Oh, well, I don't know if we need to use title 42 enforcement. I don't know if we need to use migrant protection protocols and return to Mexico, because, frankly, we knew they would be fine with a flood across our border.
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Mr. ROY. So we filed a discharge petition of that bill.
Now, I want a little history here for 1 minute. We introduced that discharge petition, and we got our normal group of Members who like to fight for freedom. We had 30 or 40 of us get on that discharge right away. And then it was a slog. It was a slog for the better part of a year. We tried in the summer, we got it to 75. We went on Tucker Carlson. We said: Hey, here are the people who have signed it, and here are the ones who haven't.
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Mr. ROY. Suddenly, that list grew to 125.
Then what?
We went back on Tucker. We went back: Hey, here is what the list number is.
Suddenly, that number grew to about 160. We got it up to 195, and then it stalled. Then 2 weeks ago, when all of the title 42 news started breaking that the CDC director in all her infinite wisdom--I'm not going to go down that rabbit trail at the moment--and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary said, Oh, yeah, we are not going to do title 42 anymore.
All of a sudden, people around here said, Whoa, well, that will be a thing.
I knew it was a thing a year ago, and my friend from Virginia knew it was a thing a year ago. The gentleman has been to the border four times in his brief tenure. I live 100 miles from the border. Well, my District is 100 miles from the border.
So we get this discharge petition. Now, we have got it. We have got 210, I think--give or take one--signatures on that, all Republicans. Not one Democratic colleague has yet to sign it.
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Mr. ROY. Yet there are four Democratic Senators--Senator Manchin, Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Senator Jon Tester--who have all said, Hey, we shouldn't be getting rid of title 42.
Can my friend from Virginia explain why not one Member, even from a border State, of our Democratic colleagues will sign that discharge petition?
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Mr. ROY. Well, like any good Republican Conference, we did nothing. We did nothing. We let the moments of leverage just pass right on by and did nothing.
Yet, I sat here on the floor, while I had some of my Republican leadership colleagues saying: We got all this great stuff. Can you believe what we got? We got the Hyde amendment.
You are supposed to get the Hyde amendment. It has been law for 35 years. Just because Democrats say they are not going to use it, you say: Don't worry, we got the Hyde amendment, and then you pat yourself on the back.
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Mr. ROY. $1.6 trillion, $1 billion of plussed-up spending, $14 billion for Ukraine, without a single debate here on the floor of the House about how much money we should spend and what we should get out of it.
No change to the mandate of vaccines being stuck in the arms of our men and women in uniform, Border Patrol, or the requirements for healthcare workers. No change on border security, none; no requirements whatsoever on border security. That is not getting a win.
Now, here we sit. The gentleman raised an important question.
We have got about 5 minutes, to be respectful of our friend from Wisconsin's time.
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Mr. ROY. Correct, and he understands what the swamp is all about.
The gentleman brought up the impact--I think that this is one of most important things we can say here in closing. The gentleman brought up the impact in Lynchburg, Virginia. People think this is just a border issue, and I come down here because it is Texas. Yeah, we are taking it on the chin. I have ranchers who are crying. I have people who are victims of crime. I have migrants in my district who are abused, all under the false name of compassion, about open borders.
We have got to sit back and find dead bodies of migrants on ranches, get a morgue brought down to put 115 dead bodies in, in one county. My Democratic colleagues are like: Whatever. Who cares? It is just some problem we have just got to deal with.
That is the reality. But it stretches throughout the country.
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Mr. ROY. If the gentleman will oblige, if he agrees with these numbers, we are looking at about a million illegal encounters in just 6 months of this year. We have seen more than six times as many daily apprehensions since Mayorkas took office. In March alone, there were 97,000 southern border encounters, through half of the month. Of those, 51 percent were removed under title 42.
So it tells you half are being removed for title 42, and they are about to end it. Mayorkas has used title 42 as the basis for almost every one of those removed. So what would it look like, this past year, without title 42? Title 42 has been used, I think the gentleman would agree, more than 1.7 million times during this pandemic.
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Mr. ROY. In fact, under Secretary Mayorkas at DHS, we have seen more than 2.2 million encounters, and everyone who wasn't turned away under title 42 was released.
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Mr. ROY. That is 700,000 releases last year.
Now, what about this: In fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol encountered 10,700 criminal noncitizens. 3,662 have been arrested thus far in 2022. The combined timeframes include roughly 85 convictions of manslaughter or homicide; 604 sexual offenses; almost 3,000 convictions of illegal drug possession; and based on reports, at least 14 who are on the terrorist watch list.
In just the first 5 months of fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol encountered 525,000 people, other than Mexicans. In just the first 5 months of fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol encountered 421 Chinese nationals. In just the first 5 months of fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol encountered 7,191 Russians out on the southwest border.
I say all of that to say this: When we don't secure our border, when we turn Border Patrol into a processing organization, we leave our borders wide open for got-aways. Then we have dangerous narcotics and fentanyl pouring into our communities, we have people dying, and we have gangs.
Can the gentleman speak to the deaths and the gangs and the crime and the impact in Virginia, 1,500-miles away from where we are even talking about?
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Mr. ROY. I thank the gentleman from Virginia. I am at just over 29 minutes, so I would tell the gentleman from Wisconsin that I am going to wind down here in the next minute. I appreciate his time, his leadership, and his indulgence.
I also want to thank the Speaker and the staff for being here while we are continuing to talk about this important topic.
I will just close by saying, this is a massive national security issue. This is a massive issue of the most important relevance to the safety and well-being of the people that we represent.
Why this body is not engaged in just a complete, full, and robust review, hearings, oversight, and legislation to ensure that we protect the sovereignty of the United States and enforce the laws of the United States, is beyond me.
The people's House has an obligation. Article I has an obligation to check Article II and to demand that those executing the laws actually do so.
I respectfully submit to the Speaker and to my colleagues on the other of the aisle:
When are we going to do our job?
How many dead migrants found on ranches is enough?
How many dead Americans from fentanyl overdoses--fentanyl poisonings, to be more accurate--is enough?
How much money flowing into the hands of dangerous cartel organizations, transnational organizations, turning Mexico into a narco-terror state, is enough?
How much do we have to suffer, as a people in this country, as a State in Texas?
Again, the migrants who seek to come here are getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, getting abused and dying in the heat along the southern border, how much of that do we have to tolerate before my colleagues on the other side of the aisle wake up?
Madam Speaker, I appreciate gentleman from Wisconsin for all that he does in representing his constituents and for his indulgence.
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