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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, everybody knows that except for Native Americans, this great Nation of ours is a nation of immigrants.
We are one of the most welcoming nations in the world, maybe the most welcoming to immigrants, because about a million people come here every year legally.
My family has been blessed by two: a daughter-in-law of 45 years from South Korea and a granddaughter-in-law of about 6 or 7 years from Ethiopia. I have learned much from them. And I think America is great because of the people that come here.
But we are also a nation based on the rule of law. We have not seen that immigration law enforced over the last 4 years. So I am going to be voting for Governor Noem because she is committed to enforcing our immigration laws.
I think Secretary Mayorkas felt in his heart that America ought to be a land of opportunity, the opportunity for anybody who wanted to come here. He said he was enforcing the laws, but we know that he wasn't enforcing laws because you saw, every night on TV, people crossing the Rio Grande coming to this country and violating our laws as they entered.
We all know that if you are going to be a sovereign nation, you have got to control your borders. We can't have millions of people coming here in violation of our laws--people who are on the Terrorist Watchlist, people with criminal records, everybody just willy-nilly coming here. We are that land of opportunity but also a land of the rule of law.
We are seeing deportations going on now with priority on people who are criminals or on the Terrorist Watchlist. We are hearing some economists and some business people saying our economy is in jeopardy if we deport these people, but no employer is going to hire somebody on the Terrorist Watchlist if they know that they are. No employer is going to hire somebody with a criminal record if they know about that criminal record. So let's talk about the impact of deportation on the economy after people with criminal records, after people who are on the Terrorist Watchlist, and the 1.2 or 1.3 million people who have been adjudicated who did not meet the test of our law so they could legally be in this country, to have those three categories of people deported. Then maybe let's talk about the impact on the economy after that. But I think that is quite a few months down the road.
One other reason that I am voting for Governor Noem--and this is a repeat of what I said last night on the floor of the U.S. Senate in regard of Pete Hegseth being Secretary of Defense. When these people who are nominees come to my office, I point out to them a couple of things: No. 1, I always say, You are going to be asked if you will answer our letters. And everybody for decades has been saying yes to that. And I point out to them how they ought to really say ``maybe,'' because I use the last 4 years of the Garland Department of Justice as an example, showing these nominees, when they come to my office, a pile of about 158 letters that the Department of Justice and the FBI haven't appropriately answered, even after they said they had answered all of our letters.
Now, that may be tongue in cheek--``maybe''--when I tell them that. But I think we have a responsibility to make sure in our constitutional job of oversight to see that the laws are faithfully executed and when we contact the administration when we think things are wrong, that we are entitled to an answer.
This isn't a problem just in a Democrat administration; this is also a problem in Republican administrations.
So I asked the new Secretary of Defense that question. He said he was going to be diligent about that. And I discussed the same thing with Governor Noem as well because we ought to have cooperation of the executive branch of government in Congress doing its job of oversight.
I am satisfied that Governor Noem will, to the best of her ability, help us with our oversight abilities and even help us get answers to those left over from the Biden administration.
I think Governor Noem is very well-qualified to be Secretary of Homeland Security. I wish her well in the enforcement of law and reemphasize that a border security is very important not only for the sovereignty of this great Nation of ours, because you can't be a sovereign nation if you don't control the borders; and, secondly, for our national security because you can't have people on the Terrorist Watchlist coming to this country and invading us; and also for law enforcement because you can't have people with criminal records coming to this country.
It is a big job that is left over from the last 4 years of a Secretary of Homeland Security who wasn't enforcing the law. I think Governor Noem is up to the task, and we wish her well as she proceeds down this road of making sure that the sovereignty of the United States is protected, our national security is protected, and we have a safe nation based upon law enforcement being able to do its job.
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