Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of my amendment to ensure that no funds in the Department of State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill from being obligated, expended, or otherwise made available to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.

In 2022, the United States contributed a total of $2.2 billion to the UNHCR, which accounts for approximately 40 percent of total funding.

You might think that given America's outsized role in funding of the UNHCR that it might work to serve in the national interests of the United States. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Like many international institutions, including the International Organization for Migration, which we debated earlier, the UNHCR has become hostile to American sovereignty and undermined our border security.

UNHCR's 2018 report, which the Trump administration wisely voted against, emphasized a need to limit detention of migrants that arrive at our borders, which is inconsistent with Federal law and inconsistent with our national interests. We need to be detaining more illegal aliens that arrive at our border, not less.

In 2021, in the thick of COVID-19, the UNHCR was actively lobbying the United States to terminate title 42, which allowed the U.S. to expel migrants back to Mexico or their country of origin. This is one of the most important tools to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

While Americans were stuck in their homes under onerous pandemic restrictions, UNHCR wanted to fling American borders wide open to illegal aliens.

In perhaps the most egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars, UNHCR and other international entities hand out cash, debit cards, and other funds for lodging, movement, and other expenses to migrants in South and Latin America bound for the United States.

These migrants receive cards with hundreds of dollars on them, funding migrants from throughout the world to travel to our southern border.

U.N. documents say the money can be handed out as cash in envelopes and transferred to bank accounts for lodging assistance and even for transportation costs to move migrant caravans.

In one Mexican town on the road to the United States, UNHCR was doling out $400 payments every 15 days to migrants, funded on the backs of American taxpayers. These funds are unrestricted and unconditional and can be used for any purpose.

America is experiencing the worst crisis at our southern border in our Nation's history, and these policies UNHCR is advocating and the cash payments they are handing out to migrants are only making the problem worse.

They call these payments cash-based intervention. My amendment ensures that we give the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees a cash- based intervention by cutting off Federal funding.

We cannot continue to fund the invasion of our own country, and I strongly urge the passage of my amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chairman, we should not be paying people to come here illegally. This is not part of the founding of our Nation.

If we are going to talk about growing our economy, and I think a lot of us know that there is a lot of value there, then we should be talking about work visas and other programs, not using taxpayer dollars to pay illegals to come here in caravans illegally across our southern border.

Let's face it. A Nation without borders is not a Nation at all. I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chairman, in 2022, over 100,000 Americans lost their lives due to drug overdoses with nearly 70 percent of those fatal overdoses being due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

The fentanyl trafficked across our southern border has turned every town into a border town. In South Carolina in 2022, we lost 2,296 lives due to drug overdoses with 1,660 of those due to fentanyl.

With deadly fentanyl taking the lives of so many Americans, I was distressed when reviewing the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill to find out we were spending more to subsidize migrants and refugees from other countries than we were spending on combating international narcotics trafficking.

My amendment would simply transfer $500 million from the migration and refugee assistance account to the international narcotics control and law enforcement account.

This would provide law enforcement with much-needed resources to combat the deadly scourge of fentanyl trafficking.

Fentanyl is a nationwide problem that requires a truly international approach. The primary source of fentanyl killing American citizens is from China. This fentanyl is brought by international drug cartels, trafficked into the United States through the southern border, and distributed into each and every one of our communities.

This is a chemical attack on our Nation to weaken our society and kill our young people. It is critical that we bolster funding to combat international narcotics trafficking.

Further, this additional funding is necessary to combat Mexican drug cartels who are seeing soaring profits under the Biden administration.

According to a House Budget Committee report, the cartels are bringing in $30 million a day, or nearly $1 billion every month or more from their human and drug trafficking operations.

The amount of human suffering taking place at the hands of these criminal cartels is heartbreaking. Criminal cartels who control our border force migrants, including women and children, into indentured servitude, sex slavery, drug trafficking, and worse to pay their way into the United States.

On the path to the border, there are rape trees where cartel members will hang the underwear of women and girls they have raped and abused on their journey to America.

Studies estimate approximately 60 percent of unaccompanied minors are exploited through child pornography, sex abuse, and drug trafficking by the cartels on their journey to the United States. This cruel reality is enabled by the Federal funds that go to entities that fuel cash payments to migrants. Not only are Biden's open-border policies enabling this human suffering, taxpayers are funding it.

It is critical that we put people over politics, citizens over cartels, and pass this amendment to bolster law enforcement and counternarcotics operations to put an end to the cartels' cruelty.

Mr. Chair, I urge passage of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chair, protecting America and her citizens isn't mean. It simply means that we are putting our Nation and her people first, as we should, because we have sworn an oath to our Constitution. Putting our citizens and our Nation's sovereignty above any other is what we should be doing right now to combat what Joe Biden and his administration have done to the United States of America.

We are literally using taxpayer dollars, paying people to come here illegally who are then infiltrating into our communities, who are raping women and killing children.

We read story after story on the news of violence happening in our communities, fentanyl drug overdoses. In fact, 10 years ago, I didn't even know what fentanyl was; but, in fact, last year I knew two people personally who died of a fentanyl overdose.

Joe Biden and his administration are allowing this to happen right in every one of our communities today, and we have to put an end to it. That means moving money around, cutting funding to the programs that are allowing this to happen, and stop funding what is coming across our southern border.

If we really, truly care about America, then put your money where your mouth is and protect her citizens.

When we talk about threatening security, the videos this week of southern California where Gavin Newsom said he was going to send the Guard down to the border because, by golly, he was going to protect the State of California. The next day there was a video of hundreds and hundreds of Chinese nationals coming into southern California illegally. It is just completely absurd, and this body needs to do something about it.

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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. MACE. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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