Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for my colleague on the other side of the aisle from Texas. On this matter we disagree.
The Secretary of Homeland Security has entirely abdicated his responsibility to follow the laws of the United States. He has done so purposely, he has done so with complete disregard to his constitutional obligation to run the Department of Homeland Security, which by definition means he is supposed to secure the homeland--having released some 2 million people into the United States.
He has come before the House Judiciary Committee, and literally said, yes, we have operational control of the border, while staring directly at a statute defining operational control of the border under the Secure Fence Act. He later went back to the committee and said, no, no, no, that is not the definition I was talking about. He knew full well what he was doing.
He is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people that he is somehow following the laws. That he is somehow following asylum laws and parole laws when he is using parole--which is supposed on a case-by-case basis--to literally dump hundreds of thousands of people into the United States.
Americans are dying. Kids are dying from fentanyl poisoning. The very migrants that my colleagues say this is supposed to be helpful for are dying in the Rio Grande or dying on south Texas ranches or getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, or dying, or getting abused in stash houses.
This is a blatant disregard of his duty. He should be removed from office. We sure as hell shouldn't be funding his salary. The Holman rule exists for us to exercise our Article I authority over an abusive Article II executive.
It is time for Congress to reassert its authority, to reclaim control, to use the power of the purse to stop the abusive authority by this Secretary to endanger the American people, to endanger migrants, and to undermine our Homeland Security.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, the amendment I put forward prohibits funding in this act to President Biden's executive orders that put needless limits on immigration enforcement, scale back sound asylum policies, and establish its own set of immigration directives that Congress has not passed.
The executive orders that President Biden put in place as soon as he got into the White House have had an enormous negative impact on the ability of Border Patrol and ICE to carry out their job--in particular, ICE.
The results are pretty clear. Deportations of criminal aliens plummeted by 62 percent between fiscal year 2020 under President Trump and fiscal year 2021 under President Biden. It went from 150,000, 103,000, all the way to 38,000 under Biden.
The fact of the matter is this is not shocking. When you issue executive orders that place restrictions on the ability of ICE to do its job, shockingly, it can't do its job.
Congress, Article I in the Constitution, has not only the power but the duty to tell Article II in the Constitution: Hey, you don't get to use the funds that we are appropriating to not do your job.
This amendment would simply say to the President of the United States and the Secretary that we have this crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, the President should follow the law instead of issuing executive orders to undermine the ability of law enforcement personnel to do their job, leaving the American people exposed to dangers, fentanyl pouring into our communities, and criminal aliens being able to carry out crimes on the streets of the country.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I appreciate my friend from Texas, and I will certainly review the amendment. I am not going to withdraw it.
I want to review the amendment and see if the reference is somehow incorrect, but the intent of the amendment--and it is now, I am being told, a leg counsel drafting error on the number, so it is probably the number that my friend is referring to.
The purpose of it is very clear, which is to turn away the executive orders of the President of the United States that have been undermining our security.
The gentleman, I think, properly referenced the number. I think on that one, given that there is a drafting error, and I have three other amendments that accomplish the same thing, I am actually going to withdraw the amendment.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time and withdraw the amendment.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, the amendment that we have in front of us prohibits funding from the act to be used to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols. This is one of the most important things that we need to address.
H.R. 2, which this body, led by Republicans, passed in the spring, addresses the need to return to use of Migrant Protection Protocols to put in place the return to Mexico and remain in Mexico policies of the previous administration, which, when combined with the use of title 42 authority, were effective in eliminating the flow coming across our border.
When the current administration completely abandoned on day one the use of Migrant Protection Protocols, the reality is we have seen the resulting chaos at our border.
It is hard for anybody who is objectively looking at the state of our border to find any defense for the current policies of the administration allowing the abject failure to occur.
This amendment would assert our Article I authority to say to the President that the President must not use funds to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols--that is, we should not be funding the failure of this administration to do its job.
Very simply put, as we put forward in H.R. 2, the choices before us should be to detain, to put in expedited removal, or to put in a migrant protection protocol-type system, remaining in Mexico. Otherwise, you have what we have, which is an utter disregard for the border using parole authority wrongly--instead of on a case-by-case basis, mass releases under parole.
We have the use of asylum, not for persecution but rather as a blanket release into the United States, to the point of 2 million releases over the last 2\1/2\ years under this administration.
This is a very simple policy that we can adopt as a Congress to restrain the abuse of this administration.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, the termination of this program resulted in a decrease by 64 percent for illegal alien apprehensions between ports of entries or found inadmissible at ports of entry.
Border encounters with Central American families--the main driver of the crisis for the better part of the first 2 years, comprised the majority of the MPP-amenable aliens--dropped by 80 percent.
A report found MPP to be ``an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system.''
The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that we are not continuing to fund the ending of the kinds of programs that could be successful-- that is the point. We are putting restrictions on the extent to which the administration can ignore the tools that it should be using.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, the amendment before us is pretty simple. It prohibits funding from this Act to carry out the Department of Homeland Security's memo titled ``Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas.''
The Biden administration issued a memo prohibiting ICE from arresting illegal migrants in most public places. If you look at a map, there are literally circles drawn that pretty much cover an entire geographic region. Effectively, they are making it impossible for ICE to do its job.
It is purposeful, and this amendment is pretty simple: Don't use money to do this stupid thing.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, this amendment prohibits--as I have done in a number of our other appropriations bills, successfully so far. This amendment prohibits any of the funding in the Homeland Security appropriations bill from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.
These executive orders are pursuing a climate fetish to the detriment of our ability to have national security and energy security. It is driving up the prices of energy and making us more dependent on China and foreign sources of energy. It is making lives more difficult for the American people.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, has literally said, the climate crisis is the most prominent threat we face. Meanwhile, we have had 6 million migrant encounters, 2 million releases in our country, and 70-some-thousand Americans die from fentanyl poisoning. There are little girls and migrants getting abused in the sex trafficking trade and getting distributed through the United States. That is what the Secretary focuses on. It is absurd. This is pretty simple: Stop doing that.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I appreciate the brevity of my colleague, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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