Providing for Consideration of H.R. Secure the Border Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 383 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 383
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 2) to secure the borders of the United States, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) five hours of debate, with two hours equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Homeland Security or their respective designees, two hours equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees, and one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 1163) to provide incentives for States to recover fraudulently paid Federal and State unemployment compensation, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Ways and Means now printed in the bill, modified by the amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, we have a crisis at our southern border that has captured the attention of the American people but has fallen on deaf ears among my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and, much more importantly, the President and the administration at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Just yesterday, I received a text from multiple law enforcement officers along the southern border, whether it is with the Department of Public Safety from Texas or whether it is with Border Patrol. For example, this is a quote:
As of last night, the radios went crazy for west and south Laredo, waves of folks, literally just group after group, bum-rushing the border. The agents were spread thin as hell.
In my precinct, we are literally all doubled up because our units are breaking down every other day. Ranchers are calling every other day, stating there are folks on their property, but we can't get there fast enough.
I hate to say this, but we are getting our rear-ends handed to us. I used to have patterns, trends, and knew the dropoff, pickup areas, but now it is an ``expletive'' free-for-all.
Approximately 600 bodies at the gate just half a mile east from Yarbrough happening right now in El Paso.
I have hundreds of these texts right now flooding into my phone, like every other Member of Congress, because what is happening is an abject failure at the border. It is a humanitarian crisis for Americans and for migrants.
Mr. Speaker, 5 million have been encountered at the southern border, and 2 million have been released into the United States, incentivizing more to come.
Over 1.5 million have evaded apprehension--i.e., got-aways evading detection from Border Patrol since the beginning of this administration.
Fentanyl is pouring into our communities. Border Patrol has seized over 35,000 pounds of fentanyl. Just last Thursday morning, I met with three fentanyl moms out of dozens of moms that I met with because their children have died from fentanyl.
Eight children in the school district in the county in which I reside southwest of Austin have died of fentanyl poisoning since last August. Over 10 have had to be resuscitated, revived with Narcan.
Just last summer, 53 migrants were effectively cooked in a tractor- trailer in the hot Texas heat in San Antonio, Texas.
Mr. Speaker, 856 dead migrant bodies were found along the Rio Grande, in south Texas, and on ranches. Little girls are sold into the sex trafficking trade, held in stash houses in Laredo, Brownsville, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, and throughout this country.
We know this to be true. It is documented to be true. Now, the administration can't even keep up with the children that we have, with 85,000, according to The New York Times, not able to be contacted.
My colleagues just blindly wipe that away, saying: That is not true. It was a phone call. They didn't get them. They must be with a family member.
What Member of this body would treat their child that way? Oh, I called and didn't get ahold of them. Oh, well.
We do that with 85,000 children. I guess that is not nearly as effective as a photo op in white pantsuits sitting next to kids in cages, allegedly, despite that those cages were created by the previous administration specifically for the protection of children. Oh, no. It doesn't look as good to have a photo op when you have 85,000 missing children.
Tomorrow, title 42 expires. Now, for the average American, title 42, they don't know what that is. What it is, is a part of our health code that allows us to say that we are going to turn people away in the middle of a pandemic.
Yet, the administration has been using that as effectively their only means of managing the border, to the extent you can call it managing the border.
In March, for example, there were approximately 200,000 apprehensions. We are going to blow right through that right now because we are at 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 apprehensions a day.
When you add those 200,000 apprehensions, not even counting all the parole, half of those are being turned away under title 42.
When title 42 expires tomorrow, more will come. There is an explosion at the border. None will be turned away because this administration has specifically chosen to ignore the law. This administration is refusing to do their job to defend the border of the United States.
The least compassionate, the least Christian, the least empathetic thing that a country could do is to allow human beings to be used as political pawns by cartels for profit while Americans die by the thousands, while migrants get raped, abused, and put in stash houses by cartels for profit by the thousands, while migrants die along the southern border by the hundreds, if not the thousands now, while our own people get overrun on their own ranches.
I sat and met with ranch owners in south Texas who had run across the dead body of a young woman, a mother with a baby, on their ranch.
Imagine the most powerful Nation in the history of the world thinking it is compassionate to have a system that allows that. Yet, that is precisely what we do.
Unfortunately, what my colleagues' response will be is, oh, we are going to have to do something about our immigration system and future flow in, figuring out what we are going to do to make sure that we reform immigration.
Don't you know that if we had comprehensive immigration reform, this would all just magically evaporate? That is completely not true.
The fact of the matter is, the starting point for any sensible border and immigration plan is a secure border in which you actually enforce the laws of the United States. Why? So people know what the rules are. We allow 600,000 to 1 million, 1.2 million, depending on the year, people to come into this country legally, as we should.
Yes, we need to reform our immigration system, but none of it matters if we are going to embrace lawlessness and wide-open borders and ignore the rule of law to the detriment of people and to the detriment of the very system that attracts people from around the world.
We should be exporting the rule of law rather than importing lawlessness, fentanyl, death, and destruction. The legislation we have before us would be a giant step toward ensuring that we can hold this administration accountable to make sure that we secure our border, protect our citizens, and protect migrants who seek to come here.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, just a couple of points.
First of all, this tired talking point of 90 percent of narcotics being captured at the ports of entry; well, of course, that is the only place where we have Border Patrol. Because they are overwhelmed doing processing, we don't have anybody patrolling the border between the ports of entry. So, of course, you are collecting and finding a higher percentage of narcotics at the ports of entry.
The second point, is this idea that this is treating kids inhumanely. Let's be very clear that what we do in this policy is treat children from other countries exactly as we treat them from Mexico and Canada under current law.
More importantly, President Obama, that radical, MAGA extremist, President Barack Obama asked for this fix in his bill.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I have to address, at least for a minute, this disparaging commentary about the Governor of Texas busing migrants.
Well, I guess my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to ignore the fact that the Democrat mayor of El Paso was teaming up with Governor Abbott to do that. The Democrat mayor of El Paso was teaming up with the Governor of Texas, Governor Abbott, to do just that. Walk a mile in our shoes in the State of Texas where we have hundreds of thousands of people pouring into our communities throughout the State of Texas. Welcome to the party.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would just remind my colleagues that it was in December when we got a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that was 4,000 pages long around 1 a.m., and then we voted on it the next day. In that bill there was specific language that prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from actually securing the homeland by securing the border.
Mr. Speaker, this crisis has taken an unimaginable toll on the State of Texas, my home State, and the citizens there as well as the migrants seeking to come into this country. I get contacted every single day, like my colleagues from Texas.
In 2022, more than 2,000 Texans died from fentanyl poisoning, a 500 percent increase from 2019. I have already talked about the 53 migrants killed in a tractor-trailer in the Texas heat.
Texas has been forced to deal with it on their own, spending $4 billion of their own budget, $3 billion last cycle because we are having to deal with a job the Federal Government is supposed to do. El Paso, state of emergency; Laredo, state of emergency; Brownsville, state of emergency; San Antonio, beefing up to try to deal with the surge. We are dealing with it every single day in Texas.
Van Duyne).
Ms. VAN DUYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill. President's Biden's policies have caused a massive surge of 370,000 unaccompanied children to come to our southwest border since he took office. Where is the outrage? Where are the tears?
According to an HHS whistleblower, the U.S. Government has become a middleman in a large scale, multibillion-dollar child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children. Where is the outrage? Where are the tears?
We have seen from Members on the other side of the aisle that they are claiming that this bill is going to somehow hurt children. Are they reading the reports of minors as young as 9 who are being brought over illegally and are working the midnight shift, the graveyard shift, in meatpacking plants? Again, where are the tears? Where is the outrage?
H.R. 2 stops future surges and protects children by treating unaccompanied children from Mexico and the rest of the world in the same manner, enabling their safe return home to their families after they are screened for indications of trafficking or a credible fear of persecution.
I was on the city council for 6 years, and I was mayor for 6 years of a city of about 250,000 people. I saw the cost of illegal immigration firsthand at the local level. I saw the toll that it put on our local cities and communities in housing, in schools, in crime, in resources.
I was lucky enough to be able to partner with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and we saw at that time more illegal criminal aliens that were deported from our city per capita from any other city in the country. What did we see from that? Our crime dropped, and people who lived in low-income areas, minority areas, were the ones who benefited the most, because they were being targeted by that crime.
The American people did not vote for this chaos. They voted to have control over our borders. What we have seen from this administration is they continue to take every single tool out of the toolbox that is able to actually secure our borders.
The American people sent us to D.C. to secure our borders and put an end to the worst humanitarian crisis our Nation has ever seen. It is absurd that we are even here today having to pass a bill to force this administration to enforce the laws and do its most basic job, which is to enforce our laws, secure our border, and protect our Nation.
What we offer today through this rule will be legislation that will strengthen our southern border, secure this country, protect Americans, protect migrants, and ensure that our communities can be safe, particularly along our southern border in States like Texas where the Speaker pro tempore and I and many of our colleagues reside and other friends of ours in Arizona, New Mexico, and California, that are dealing with this every single day.
This bill is pretty simple. It strengthens and requires the administration to enforce existing law and closes the asylum and detention loopholes that have been exploited for years. It curbs release into the interior, a massive pull factor, by requiring DHS to detain, remove, or place in a safe third country, but in doing so allows a path for migrants to be able to pursue asylum claims and just simply follows current law to not be released into the United States. Again, it is pretty straightforward.
It reimplements the asylum deals that were working and ends the bogus asylum claims. It keeps families together while asylum claims are being processed.
It protects unaccompanied children by reforming TVPRA, a request from the Obama administration. It requires DHS to immediately resume border wall construction, which President Biden has halted.
The fact is the American people are very well aware of the crisis at the border that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to ignore.
I had some friends send me, while I was speaking here, the comment section from The New York Times. I am not talking about Breitbart or something. I am talking about The New York Times. Page after page after page of citizens saying, for example: Though I have always voted Democrat, my vote in the next Presidential election will go to whichever candidate has the best, most seemingly effective plan for securing our border. It is the most pressing issue for our country.
If only the President and my Democratic colleagues would agree.
The fact of the matter is we have a devastating crisis that is killing Americans and killing migrants. Right now, to be very clear, our Border Patrol agents and law enforcement community along the southern border are overwhelmed. They are crying out for help.
I had a man text me just a minute ago that works with Border Patrol and DPS. He said:
We are in a Broken Arrow moment. We are overrun. We have no place to go. We have a crisis.
This body needs to respond, and we need to take action as we speak.
Mr. Speaker, shortly, I will be offering an amendment to the rule. The amendment is a very short, one-page modification that makes clear that Congress will address, within 60 days, the dangerous cartels confronting our country. It will add a sense of Congress to clarify certain language involving agricultural issues relating to E-Verify. amendment offered by mr. roy
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment to the resolution.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I urge support for the resolution, as amended.
The material previously referred to by Ms. Scanlon is as follows: An Amendment to H. Res. 383 Offered By Ms. Scanlon of Pennsylvania
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 3. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the resolution (H. Res. 178) affirming the House of Representatives' commitment to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. The resolution shall be considered as read. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution and preamble to adoption without intervening motion or demand for division of the question except one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees.
Sec. 4. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H. Res. 178.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source