Secure the Border Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Jordan, Chairman Green, and Chairman McCaul for their leadership and contributions to the bill that we see before us today.

Mr. Speaker, I will comment briefly on my experience and what I saw at the border at the invitation of members of the Judiciary Committee. I was able to kind of see, I think, two very diverse parts of the border.

First and foremost, in McAllen, Texas, where we spent a couple of days and had an opportunity not only to talk to border agents themselves, but also sat through a full presentation by Homeland Security, one of the things that struck me, and I think is very pertinent to what we are discussing today, is every time I asked a border agent or every time I spoke with someone from Homeland Security, I would say: What can we do as Members of Congress?

There are a lot of times you go on these trips and there are tours, and you feel like when you are done, it is overwhelming, and you really want to know how we can have an impact.

What made an impression on me was every person I spoke to said title 42. I don't think you could find somebody, probably at the times when I was at the border, who could really describe what title 42 meant or what the impact would be.

Guess what? Those agents knew. They knew what it meant. They knew it would be an unbelievable unleashing of many different factions of people that were immigrating for any number of reasons across the border, and they knew it was going to overwhelm them.

As we stand here today and debate this bill, when you are watching it on TV right now, quite honestly, it is overwhelming. You can see the masses of people that are gathering.

Mr. Speaker, I will, once again, thank Chairman Jordan, Chairman Green, and Chairman McCaul for putting all this together.

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