Violence Against Women By Illegal Aliens Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. LEE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 7909, the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act.
In 3\1/2\ years, President Joe Biden and border czar Vice President Kamala Harris have allowed more than 7.5 million unvetted illegal aliens into the United States.
At the same time that they facilitated the collapse of our southwest border, President Biden and Vice President Harris have abandoned any semblance of interior immigration enforcement.
In a September 2021 memo, the Biden-Harris administration made enforcement more difficult for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. In training materials obtained by the Judiciary Committee and published in a staff report earlier this year, DHS failed to answer seemingly clear-cut questions, such as whether an alien who served a 20-year drug-related prison sentence or an alien who discharged a firearm outside of a police station should be priorities for arrest and deportation.
Those are the training materials required for all of ICE's enforcement personnel nationwide. Instead of making clear that ICE officers should carry out their duties to remove criminal aliens from American streets, the Biden-Harris administration instructs ICE officers to develop a full profile of a criminal alien before deciding whether to arrest someone who is in the country illegally.
In the training examples, that includes determining whether an alien has high blood pressure or is a caregiver, rather than focusing on appropriate considerations such as criminal history and whether the illegal alien is a danger to the community.
In a transcribed interview with the Judiciary Committee, a former top ICE official admitted that the Biden-Harris administration's policies have made immigration enforcement more dangerous for ICE officers, more difficult to carry out, and less efficient overall.
The ICE official even acknowledged that because of the border crisis, fewer ICE officers are available to track down public safety and national security threats because they are left to do border-related tasks, but this shouldn't be a surprise.
In 2019, Kamala Harris told the ACLU she would slash funding for immigration detention, close private immigration detention centers, and even use taxpayer funding to provide transgender surgeries for illegal aliens detained in the United States.
Here is how her policies are working out.
In fiscal year 2019, the Trump administration arrested aliens who accounted for 5,435 convictions and charges for family offenses. That number dropped to a mere 3,439 in fiscal year 2023, a 36.7 percent decrease.
In fiscal year 2019, ICE arrested aliens who were responsible for 6,650 sex offenses and 5,061 sexual assault offenses. Under the Biden administration in fiscal year 2023, ICE arrested aliens responsible for only 5,746 sex offenses and 4,390 sexual assault offenses, drops of 13 percent in each category.
These aren't just hypotheticals or just numbers. They are a reality for families across America who need these offenders to be arrested and prosecuted and, more importantly, need them to be prevented from entering the United States of America in the first place.
They are emblematic of the Biden-Harris administration's war on women. Just last week, the Judiciary Committee heard from three moms whose daughters were brutally assaulted and murdered by illegal aliens welcomed into the country by President Biden and Vice President Harris.
Tammy Nobles recounted how Joe Biden and Kamala Harris released into the country the MS-13 gang member who went on to murder and sexually assault her daughter, Kayla Hamilton. The killer later admitted to four additional murders and two additional rapes.
Patty Morin told how an illegal alien raped and strangled her daughter, Rachel, and then stuffed her body into a drainpipe. The alleged murderer entered the country through border czar Kamala Harris' wide-open southern border.
Alexis Nungaray spoke about how Joe Biden and Kamala Harris released at the border the two illegal aliens who went on to viciously assault and murder her 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn. Ms. Nungaray said: ``She had no clothing from the waist down. Her hands and her ankles were tied and thrown under the bridge of water like she was nothing but garbage.''
Victim advocate April Aguirre also told the tragic story of 11-year- old Maria Gonzalez. The Biden-Harris administration released her alleged murderer into the United States. Just 7 months earlier, the illegal alien assaulted and killed Maria, wrapped her body in a trash bag, and stuffed her in a laundry basket that he placed under her bed.
These are not isolated incidents.
In February, an illegal alien was arrested in Alabama for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl who could not consent to the intercourse as she was physically helpless or mentally incapacitated.
In April, an illegal alien was arrested in Indiana for allegedly breaking into a Michigan mobile home park and sexually assaulting two young girls.
In May, authorities arrested a 20-year-old illegal alien for allegedly snatching an 11-year-old girl off the street in front of her Lake Worth, Florida, home and sexually assaulting her. According to local officials, the Guatemalan national crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in early January, made his way to Florida shortly afterward, and does not have an immigration court date until 2027.
That is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' immigration legacy: more unvetted aliens released into American communities, more criminal aliens on American streets, and more Americans endangered by radical, reckless policies.
Kamala Harris' war on women is fueled by her open-border policies, which allow more sexual offenders, domestic violence offenders, and child abusers not only into the country but also to remain in the country indefinitely, free from fear of deportation.
The American people can end this nightmare in just 2 months. If voters choose to end this crisis, Republicans have proposed new laws that will allow the next President to secure the border and increase interior immigration enforcement on day one.
H.R. 7909 is just one of many of those bills. H.R. 7909, the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, makes crystal clear that illegal aliens who commit sex offenses are inadmissible to and removable from the United States.
The bill also fixes a discrepancy in current immigration law by creating a ground of inadmissibility for domestic violence to mirror the existing ground of removability for the same offenses. In addition, the bill expands the current ground of inadmissibility for domestic violence by cross-referencing the existing statutory definition for sex offenses.
Although many aliens can already be found inadmissible to and removable from the United States for certain sex offenses and domestic violence offenses, H.R. 7909 expands and clarifies the conduct for which an alien can be found removable from the country.
The time is now to take seriously the danger of criminal aliens in the United States. Anything that makes it easier for adjudicators and officials to ensure a criminal alien's arrest and removal should receive overwhelming bipartisan support, particularly when it comes to sex offenses and domestic violence.
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Ms. LEE of Florida. Mace).
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Ms. LEE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, Democrats assert today that this bill is unnecessary, but that ignores the clear reality of the crisis affecting our southern border and how it has affected those who are victims of these crimes in our country.
Take, for example, the fact that under current immigration law, there is no explicit ground for inadmissibility of illegal aliens who commit domestic violence offenses, despite a ground of removability for such aliens.
Consider that despite certain sex offenses making aliens removable from the country, there is currently not a ground of inadmissibility or removability for certain sex offenses.
The Biden-Harris administration's war on women must come to an end. H.R. 7909 is one step toward that. Making people inadmissible to and removable from the United States because they have committed a sex offense or a domestic violence offense should be something that even open-border Democrats can agree with us on.
The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act is a straightforward, commonsense bill that I urge my colleagues to support.
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Ms. LEE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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