Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. No. Let's pick up with Mayor Adams of New York. Here is a guy who presides over a sanctuary city--that is awesome, that is awesome--but he doesn't want to experience what is a daily occurrence along the border, for those who live in a border community.

They got some rain and wind in New York. It was blowing down the tents that the illegal aliens were dwelling in in New York at a park, so he decides this is what we are going to do: We are going to clear out a school. We are going to tell those 4,000 kids with no notice to the parents really, no notice to the teachers, no notice to the district. Boom, all these families, all these individuals--they are not all just families; you have got men of military age--2,000 of them plus--they are going to dwell in the school that your kid was getting ready to go to.

He is like: What could go wrong? Why is everybody so upset?

He says about that, the illegal aliens: I didn't see illegal migrants. I saw children. I saw children, and this community will always stand with children.

What about the 4,000 kids at the school? What about those families?

I didn't see children. I mean, he didn't say that, but that is really what he is implying: You are only a child of value if you are in the country illegally. You are not a child of value if you are going to a New York public school. That is the very attitude of this administration.

Mr. Perry was down in Eagle Pass, and I was down in Eagle Pass with Representative Good. When I talked to the Speaker, he was a little miffed with me.

He said: Why aren't you coming with us on our tour? Why are you going on your own tour?

I said: Because I have got to go back to Arizona a little early, I am going to need to leave the bus.

His staff tells my staff: Oh, Biggs can't come then because he has got to be on the bus the whole time.

I said: I am going down a day early. I am going to rent a car and invite a few friends. Scott is a friend, but I am sorry, the car filled up too fast.

We went down early. You know what CBP did? Because I go down often, I know a lot of people in CBP. They routinely take us on tours, but in this instance they said they had a new guy coming in, he hasn't been sworn in yet. He says, look--he tells my staff--you can come, but then he says, no, no, you can't come.

We reached out to the chief judge of the Western District of Texas. We said: Look, we are going to be down there, we would like to visit with you. We want you to tell us what is going on.

She says: Are you going to take them to the border?

I said: No, they withdrew the border.

She makes the call and says: I will be with Biggs and his group; we want a tour of the border.

That night you did not see anything; you didn't see a lot of people crossing, did you?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Right. Right. I will tell you why in a second. That night it was cold, really cold, unseasonably cold in south Texas. It was raining cats and dogs. We are in the van, and they are taking us down there.

I have been down there many times. We see it. It is cleaned up. They have moved 12,000 people in 24 hours because you guys, you yahoos are coming down there the next day and Secretary Mayorkas was down there yesterday. They cleaned it up. We can't have this. The media is coming down, a big gaggle of media, they can't see this. We can't have this, so they cleaned it up. They actually mowed the grass.

I asked the guy, I said: Where's the garbage, man? I know there is garbage. I know there is clothing. As we are driving along, there is this massive pile of clothing.

Did you see it, Bob? I said: Hey, is this one of the piles of clothing?

Yeah, that is one of the piles right there.

As we are going down, there are people all along the way there, right? That is what you see.

Now, why did you not see anybody?

We met the next day with a lot of folks you didn't get to meet with-- sorry--one of which informed us very clearly that the flow of people at the ports of entry are controlled by the CBP One app, so they will give you a green light.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. If you want to come into the country illegally, they want to slow--they want to get some of you to come into the port of entry, so they have created an app. You preregister as an illegal alien say: I am going to be coming, and I want to be able to declare asylum, which is also illegal, by the way. That is not what the law is. So you have got an app.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. The gentleman is correct. The reason is because they want to facilitate you getting through faster and we want to distribute you throughout the country, at least this administration does. You register with the CBP One app. Well, they are going to tell you where the green lights are, and they are going to gray out where you can't come.

So they started graying out Eagle Pass. This bridge we are talking about, there is a port of entry on the bridge. They said: No, we are not going to take any more people that way. You are going to need to go to some other port of entry, and so they do. That is how they slow that down.

However, in the meantime, between the ports of entry, they are coming in droves.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. The record number for apprehensions was 302,000 plus-- 302,000 people. That would have put it clearly within the top 20 largest cities in this country, when you think about that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Yes, I will speak to that for just a second. A couple weeks ago now, I took a group of people to Lukeville, Arizona. Now, Lukeville is an incredibly remote port of entry, 35 people or so live by there. You come through Ajo, if you are coming from Phoenix or Tucson, and you are going to go to Rocky Point down in Mexico, it is very heavy traffic.

Well, they actually had to close that port of entry. Why? Because the number of people pouring through, cutting holes in the fences, and we had to bring these people--we are talking multiple thousands a day, multiple thousands a day, 30,000 people in the last couple weeks, right? Think about that.

What do they do? All they could do is take the personnel that they have, and they start working the line, right? No, they don't. They actually start transporting them to an off-the-border facility, a soft- sided facility kind of like the one you saw except smaller for the first wait, because it is so remote, it literally takes hours to get to a soft-sided facility in Tucson, Arizona. They will go there, and they will spend a few hours, maybe a day or two before they are distributed.

What happens? When I was there, I thought, oh, man, we missed the flood because we got there a little late in the morning. I went and talked to these people.

I said: Where are you from?

Guinea, Burkina Faso, Senegal, India, Pakistan, a few from Guatemala.

Where are you going? You know what they do? They look around, they find a paper, it is a laminated card. It has the names of the people they are going to be in contact with, with phone numbers and an address where they are going to be taken. Everywhere from the Bronx to Missouri, to L.A., to Houston. They are going all over.

Anyway, I said: This is interesting. Let's go on down, and we will drive the border road for a while. We drive the border road. There is a family of 10 people or so.

I said: How did you get here?

We came about 2 hours ago. No, they were 4 hours.

We came 4 hours ago. We came through a hole in the fence down here that the coyote showed us, and we walked on up and we are just waiting. We haven't seen a CBP agent.

In 4 hours?

No, we haven't. We are just waiting. We are assured that someone will be along.

They were from Mexico, within Mexico, so we were able to speak Spanish and talk to them.

Then we go on down, and as we are going along, there isn't anybody. There is no CBP agent. We go a few miles, and we stop.

We are like, you know, we have kind of missed the rush. One of the people I am with said: That looks like a group right there, over here, down to the right, on the road.

Sure enough, there's 30 or 40 people walking, right? We wait, and they get by, and there is another group right behind them and another group and another group. We asked them where they were from. They are from all over.

Where are you going? All over.

How did you get in? There is a hole in the fence right down here a couple miles.

We drove down there. Again, no CBP agents. Why? They are working their tail off having to transport and process. They can't do what they were hired to do, what we need them to do.

We happened to run into a contractor: Hey, what are you doing?

He has got a truck, and we had just seen the welding guy, who I knew was fixing the fence, and he had just driven by. We talked to this guy and said: What is up? Well, you know, he gets this notebook out and starts showing us all the holes in the fence they have had to repair.

He said on this day--I can't remember the actual day; I think it was December 14--there were something like 28 holes in the fence that they had to repair. We were there at 10:30, 11:00 in the morning, they had already repaired six holes in the fence.

I asked: What is happening? How does this happen? He says: Well, you will see along the Mexico side there is a highway. The coyote will come in, controlled by the cartel. He has got his own torch to cut the holes in the fence. They will wrap chains around it, they will pull out the slats, and people will just flood through, and that is what you saw.

That day they had already repaired six holes, and we said: Well, where's the agents? We were looking for agents, as well. I love the agents; I talk to them all the time.

They said: Oh, they are back at the facility processing.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Because they can't get there. You know what? My colleagues on the Democrat side, they will tell you that there is no problem down on the border because they really don't think there is. I think this is an existential crisis.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Three days.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. One hundred fifty years ago.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Can I interject something? We have been talking about Eagle Pass, and I have a bit of breaking news for you.

Those who were with me, we actually drove through the golf course to get to a couple of our points.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. The breaking news is this: That park area has now been-- today, Governor Abbott of Texas, because he feels so overrun, has declared a state of emergency, and that property has been taken over by the State of Texas.

They will arrest anybody who enters that property for criminal trespass and prosecute them. I guess it underlines kind of a finer point that we have been talking about. Is this a crisis? Are we chasing phantoms, or is this a real crisis? Well, it is a real crisis, and as we sit here, this administration is a lawless administration. They are not going to do anything to actually enforce the border.

I say this often. We can pass every kind of policy we want, but believe me, title 8 forbids Mayorkas from doing what he is doing.

He can't catch and release. Courts have told him to reinstate MPP, the migrant protocol protections. He won't do that. This administration is lawless, and I can only think of one thing, and the Founders gave it to us. They were crystal clear. They said: Your check, legislative branch, is the purse strings. It is the funding. I do not know how we can continue to fund an administration that chooses willfully to facilitate an invasion of the United States of America. How can we?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. You are being asked to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security today with no policy changes even. That is what you are being asked. But more than that, you are being asked to continue all the other programs, the crazy subsidies for Green New Deal stuff, which was forecast at $350 billion, which is now forecast at $2.5 trillion. But they are asking you to basically get on board that. So you are getting a weak sauce plan from the Senate that even Senators are rebelling against, saying this will do nothing, which it won't do anything.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Well, so the question is really then are you content with approximately 5 million more people illegally entering the country over the next 12 months or are you going to try to do something about it? Because 302,000 plus at least--they acknowledge 50,000 on the got- aways. They don't know what the unknown got-aways are, but--a lot of people don't this, but I am going to explain it.

When you have a group that you can't catch up to--and we get that a lot in Arizona. Arizona is the number one known got-away place. Why? Because it is rugged. It is really desolate. If you see a group, and you can't tell how many it is, do you know what you get to mark down? Twenty plus. They count it as 20. It may be 75. It may be 50. It may be 22. But it is inaccurate. And the people I talk to tell me it is at least one for one. If it is 50,000, it is 100,000 because they don't know what the real number is. That is 402,000 last month alone. And do you want to continue that? How can we as a country continue that? And they are coming from 170 different nations.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. I will tell you this: There may be three people over here I can name. I won't name them to protect them because they always talk like they are going to help us out, but they don't ever help us out. I love them to death, but they never quite can deliver it. But I will tell you, when you go along the border from RGV to San Ysidro, which is San Diego, and you go talk to the local folks, many of whom are Democrat leaders of those cities and those counties, they want something done. They will stand with you.

And do you know what you guys heard in your group, and we happened to be there? They said shut the government down until you shut the border down. And do you know what? That is a common sentiment all along the border. It is common in my district in Arizona. And I have got a great plan for that, but I can't introduce it in 2 minutes, but, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, that is the facts. Even the Democrats who are facing the brunt of this--and I don't care what New York is doing. You go tell the people down in Ajo, Arizona, why they are getting overrun right now. They would like to hear it from you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source