Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend from Arizona for leading and for his leadership on the border, on this amendment, on this issue.

I rise in strong support of the amendment. As I see my friend from Ohio, Mr. Joyce, I rise in strong support of his legislation. Frankly, Mr. Chairman, all of us here in the House and Senate, as we talk about the necessary funding of government, should be talking about what we need to do to secure America's border, and it should start with the Secretary of Homeland Security, who has been derelict in his job, and this is the most important job that he has.

Not only has he gone before committees and said, Yes, the border is secure, as Mr. Biggs talked about, he said there is operational control. Do you know who has operational control of the border? The drug cartels have operational control of the border.

It has become a multibillion-dollar industry for the drug cartels to bring people across our border--not just from South America, Central America--from all over the world, over 140 countries, millions of people. He can't even tell you what the real number is. Is it 5 million? Is it 8 million?

This Department of Homeland Security won't even tell you what that number is of how many millions of people have come into our country illegally since he took this job, since Joe Biden became President of the United States and systematically destroyed the things that were working to secure America's border.

More people than live in my home State of Louisiana have entered our country illegally since Joe Biden became President of the United States. They can't even tell you where they are going. We see mayors all around the country, livid--Republican mayors, Democrat mayors. It doesn't matter what your party affiliation is. It is wrecking cities.

Read comments from the mayor of New York City himself, Mayor Adams. The cost of migrants will destroy New York City. You have people, leaders--Republican, Democrat--all across America pleading with President Biden to address this problem, and he refuses. He doesn't want to solve this problem.

Secretary Mayorkas doesn't want to do his job and solve this problem. The tools are there. The ability is there. They dismantled the things that were working day one, and so what we have done as House Republicans is brought legislation, not just today in Mr. Joyce's bill, but we brought H.R. 2, the border security package that we passed months ago, to take necessary steps to secure America's border.

It has been sitting over in the Senate. They don't want to take action on this. The United States Senate has sat back and done not a single thing to secure the border. They want to pass a CR over here that continues the open border policy, meaning millions more people coming across our border illegally to communities all across America.

I have gone to our border. I have embedded with our Border Patrol agents. You don't need to re-invent the wheel to know how to fix this problem. Our Border Patrol agents will tell you what needs to happen to fix this problem. They have told the President. He doesn't want to take those steps.

This House took those steps, but more of those steps need to be funded, and that is what Mr. Joyce did in his bill that the Committee on Appropriations put together, to actually fund more Border Patrol agents, to give them more technology, to build the wall. Yes, walls work. Technology works.

Border Patrol agents want to do their job because they don't want the drug cartels having operational control like Secretary Mayorkas has allowed them to have. If he is going to be derelict in his duty, we are not going to be derelict in ours, and so why don't we work until we get this right, not only here in the House, which we have done and we are going to continue to do, but until the Senate finally realizes it is a problem worth taking up for America, until the President of the United States finally realizes this is a problem worth taking up for the American people, who are sick and tired of an open southern border.

It is not just because it is open. It is because of the problems that are coming with it every single day. We are losing 150 young people who are dying every single day in America from the drug overdoses that are coming in from the open southern border.

Imagine if an airplane fell out of the sky every single day in America. How long would it take for us to stop everything we are doing and fix that? It wouldn't be a week that would go by that we would allow that to happen as a country, and, yet, it has been going on for over a year and a half, over 2 years, every community.

Talk to coroners in any community in America and ask them how many fentanyl deaths they are seeing of young people. I had a high school group here not long ago, and I said, How many of you know someone who died of a fentanyl overdose? Every single hand went up.

These are our young people in America that they are poisoning with drugs made in China, infiltrated through our southern border because the drug cartels have been allowed to have operational control of our border by a Secretary who says it is under control. If that is under control, I don't know what he would consider out of control.

We are fed up with this problem. America is fed up with this problem. Look at what they are saying all around the country. The whole mainstream media is covering this issue. It is not like this issue is under radar anymore. Six months ago, it was. This issue wasn't being covered for a long time.

I have to give credit to a lot of my colleagues who represent border communities, because they are on the front lines. They started getting vocal, because they started seeing it before anybody else did. They started raising alarms, and they said, This is a crisis.

Then others started going down to the border. We have taken over 150 delegations down to the border, Members of Congress, again, embedding with Border Patrol agents, talking about the problem, listening to our Border Patrol agents, who are telling us what needs to happen. That is how we built the legislation we passed. That is how we built the legislation we are working on passing here on this floor right now.

Look at what they are saying all around the country. Everybody is seeing this except the President of the United States and the United States Senate. We are not going to be quiet about this. We are going to continue fighting until we get this problem fixed. America demands it. America deserves it. We need to secure our border.

That is what this bill does. It is a package of bills. It has been months in the works. It is time for the President to pay attention to this crisis and join with us as we talk about funding the government. You fund the government to address the problems that this country is facing, and this open southern border is at the top of that list.

Let's get this done.

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