Choosing Life

Floor Speech

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Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, I very much thank my good friend from Utah for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, in all the years of my life, never would I ever have imagined that I would witness an American President using every resource available to him to unravel American national security, but that is our reality.

Since Joe Biden's very first day in office, the American people have watched him repeatedly and deliberately turn a blind eye to the border crisis unfolding down at our southern border and even up in our northern border.

As a result of his negligence, millions and millions of illegal aliens, including cartel members, terror suspects, human traffickers, deadly drugs, illicit weapons, and more, much more, have been allowed to enter the Nation freely with fatal results for tens of thousands of American citizens, and even the migrants themselves.

Monthly illegal alien apprehension all-time records have been set and then broken under this administration, which is by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' own admission, releasing upwards of 85 percent of those unlawfully crossing the border into the interior of the U.S.--85 percent of those apprehended at the border are released into the country.

More than 242,400 illegals were encountered crossing the southern border last November, a 236 percent increase from November 2020, roughly the population of Scottsdale, Arizona.

I would give an appropriate metaphor for December's historic border apprehensions, which reportedly have surpassed 302,000, but the administration has yet to make those public.

Knowing this, the President and his cronies would still have us believe that the southern border is somehow secure, which leads me to think that either they do not know the definition of the word ``secure,'' or they think the American people are stupid.

My bet is on the latter, especially when you look at the dramatic dip in illegal border crossings this month. We were at the border 2 weeks ago with our Speaker and inexplicably before we got there, numbers had dropped mysteriously.

The White House would most likely have you believe that this decline in daily border encounters is the outcome of policy change, but Americans are not stupid.

This is nothing more than another facade to fool the public into thinking that the left has finally come to its senses on border security. Don't fall for it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Whatever backhanded deal this administration has suddenly made with Mexico for a temporary period of time has nothing to do with your safety and everything to do with the optics surrounding a particular event taking place this November, a certain national election.

The only way to end this border crisis is to implement policies that stop incentivizing illegal immigration by finishing the border wall, by ending catch and release, by closing asylum loopholes, by blocking the exploitation of the Department of Homeland Security's CBP One app, restoring interior enforcement, and more. These are all policies that this administration and congressional Democrats clearly have no intention of doing on a permanent basis whatsoever.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: The fate of America's sovereignty and very existence rests with its people, whose votes this November will make that determination of whether America survives as we know it; as the great beacon of freedom shining on the hill for the rest of the world to see and emulate.

I will never falter. I will continue working to close the southern border and hold this administration to account.

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