Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to highlight to my colleagues what exactly is happening in New York City as a result of Joe Biden's manufactured open-borders policy and the crisis that has been created in terms of a migrant crisis in New York City.

This morning, a lot of New Yorkers woke up to the news that two of our NYPD officers were attacked by a mob of migrants. It is outrageous to think that individuals who came to this country and claim to be innocent asylum seekers would attack our police officers. That disrespect is unbelievable. Nevertheless, sadly, it is not the only time we have seen crimes like this taking place.

Now, let's remember that the individuals who are coming through the southern border are paying thousands of dollars to the drug cartels to be smuggled here. My mayor is further incentivizing this by offering housing, food, healthcare, education, legal services, and laundry services. You name it. The taxpayers are paying to house those individuals who attacked those police officers.

Nonetheless, that is not all we are seeing happen.

Mr. Speaker, let me show you a few recent headlines all in New York: Illegal immigrant bites off police sergeant's finger after DUI bust, a driving while intoxicated bust; four migrants were arrested for stealing more than $12,000 in goods from Long Island's Macy's; New York City migrant pick-pocketing teams are the newest headache for the NYPD; asylum seeker was accused of killing--of killing--another at Randall's Island migrant shelter; a migrant woman was arrested after slapping an NYPD cop. A migrant was stabbed by girlfriend in a possible love triangle; migrants are behind the boom in New York City's red light district, Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, says.

Democratic mayors are also saying this is destroying New York City. We are seeing New York City struggle to pay for this crisis that Joe Biden, again, created with his executive orders and 60 policy changes he made from the Trump administration that made our border wide-open.

Chuck Schumer in the Senate refuses to do anything. They refused to pass our bill, H.R. 2, which would end this crisis today.

I called ICE this morning, and I said that I want these individuals deported. The ones who are committing crimes like attacking our police officers, can we at least agree as Democrats, Independents, and Republicans that we should not tolerate that?

What also really concerns me is that we have caught hundreds of people on the terrorist watch list at our border. As a New Yorker from the post-9/11 world, I have to question that there are 1.8 million people who have totally evaded law enforcement. In fact, the Customs and Border Patrol union leader told us today it is probably more like 4 million. That is on top of the 8 million or so who have come, paid the cartels to come here, and have claimed asylum. We are not even talking about those people who turned themselves in. We are talking about the 4 million got-aways. We don't know who they are, where they are, and what their intentions are.

That should concern every single person in this body, particularly, the President of the United States.

TSA is allowing individuals to board planes without identification, like the American citizens have to provide when we board planes. They can use a detainer. They can use a warrant for their arrest and all sorts of other documents that are probably produced, by the way, from fake identification that they used to come over the border. That is directly against the 9/11 Commission recommendations.

The last thing I just want to talk about is that New York City is complicit because they are not complying with detainer requests.

ICE is trying to do some of its job. When these people commit crimes, NYPD arrests them, and they release them back onto the street.

Why?

It is because they are forced to by the Democratic policies put in place by my city and my State. That is unfortunate.

So, now, when these two individuals attacked the police officers, they were arrested, but they were released back onto the street. They weren't detained to be sent to deportation. In fact, now ICE has to try to go out and find them with no cooperation from local law enforcement because Democrats in New York have tied their hands.

That is unconscionable, it is unsafe, and we have to make sure that the Democrats here, the Democrats over in the Senate, and the President stop playing with fire because this is a dangerous situation.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, our ally in Israel is being attacked by terrorists. Iran is making threats against us saying they are going to commit attacks against us on our own soil. We have them attacking American soldiers at 160 different posts in the Middle East. We saw three soldiers killed by Iran proxies the other day.

Yet we are going to keep this border open like this?

It is unconscionable to me, and I expect action from the Senate.

Allowing 1.8 million people to continue to pay the cartels to come in is not border security. So we expect them to either pass our bill, the Border Security Act, or pass something that is reasonable so that we can have a real discussion and debate and seal this border and make our country secure once and for all.

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