Secure the Border Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. SORENSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 2.

For years and years, politicians have kicked immigration reform down the road over and over and over again for future generations, they will have to address it. Unfortunately, the bill that we have today that we are considering just continues the trend.

Our border must be secure. Make no mistake, we have to do everything that we can to prevent harmful drugs like fentanyl from destroying the lives of our kids and our families.

We need real solutions. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to solve our border crisis, but the bill in front of us today would only make our border less secure.

The bill in front of us today does nothing to address the root causes of our system's backlog and only serves to gut our asylum ability, denying the protections to the people who need it the most.

Gutting the few remaining pathways to claim asylum and kicking Dreamers out of the only country that they have ever known, it just accelerates the chaos and extremism and, in the end, all it does is harm our neighbors and our communities.

Like many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I support smart, targeted investments in border security and providing law enforcement the resources that they need to end the flow of weapons and fentanyl into our country.

Speaker McCarthy just spoke about the dangerous people that were just caught this year, but I proposed an amendment that would have hired an additional 500 Customs and Border Protection officers at ports of entry to screen more people at the border.

Another amendment that I provided would allow $50 million to expand a task force to go after fentanyl distributors.

You know what? Speaker McCarthy and every Republican refused to consider these amendments in committee, ideas that have bipartisan support.

Listen, the story of America, it is a story of immigrants, opportunity, and hard work. We have to push back against legislation that sows division and chaos. Let's come together to create an immigration system that works, that protects our Dreamers, and treats migrants humanely, ensuring that our hometowns are safe from drugs and crime.

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