Secure the Border Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, Ronald Reagan once said that it isn't that our liberal friends are ignorant; it is just that there is so much they know that isn't so.

As you hear the talking points coming from the left concerning this bill, with all the Chicken Little arguments that they are presenting about how the world is going to collapse, farmers won't be able to grow things, and our economy will crumble if we secure our border, it is just plain ridiculous.

I live in south Texas in what they call the ``fatal funnel,'' in between two highways that lead from the border into Houston, which has become known as the human trafficking capital of the United States.

I visited facilities where 50 percent of the young women there, of hundreds of young women, will admit to being assaulted along the journey. I have visited the border and seen the families that have had their lives destroyed by what is going on at the border. Of course we know about the fentanyl deaths, hundreds of thousands of them.

To hear the talking points coming from the left that securing our border is un-Christian is absolutely ridiculous. I am both a Christian and the husband of an immigrant. I can tell you; I was there when my wife put her hand on her heart and said the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time as an American, and it really meant something. That is the right way to do it.

We have a legal process, and we have an illegal process that the left continues to fund and continues to partner with the cartels and continues to allow them to profit to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, to advance an illegal process when we need to enforce the legal process. We have a right way to do it, and we can do it.

This bill secures our border. The fact of the matter is that the Democrats just don't seem to really care. They don't care about the lives that are being destroyed. They don't care about the people that are dying. They don't care about the young girls being sold into the sex trade.

This administration has lost tens of thousands of kids and so for all the tears that were happening under the Trump administration as he worked to secure the border, where is the outcry for the tens of thousands of kids this administration cannot track?

They are willing to fund the border in other countries. They just funded a bill in December. We passed an omnibus bill where they were willing to fund border security in Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nepal, and Turkey. But here in the United States of America, securing our border is not something the Democrats want to do.

Of course, yeah, we will get around to it. We just won't vote for anything that will do it. They had the chance to do it. They did not do it.

This bill will help secure our border. We need to pass it. I encourage a ``yes'' vote.

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