Secure the Southwest Border Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes.

I rise today to present H.R. 5230, which provides immediate, short-term funding to address the southwest border crisis.

In total, this bill provides $659 million to meet urgent border security and humanitarian needs for this fiscal year ending on September 30.

Thousands of illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied children, have flooded our borders and overwhelmed our current facilities and personnel.

This includes a staggering number of children, arriving with no family, who are being smuggled across our borders by criminal organizations, subject to abuse and violence. We need to put safeguards in place to prevent them from taking this dangerous journey, as well as provide the resources needed to take care of them and process them appropriately.

The President must take the lead on this by mitigating this crisis, turning back the tide of illegal immigrants, and fully enforcing our laws. This problem has, without a doubt, been exacerbated by the administration's policies on immigration, and it is up to the administration to find a way to fix that problem.

In the meantime, however, Madam Speaker, it is plain that something must be done to ensure that our law enforcement personnel and Federal agencies have the resources needed to deal with this dire situation in the short term.

The $659 million in funding in this bill focuses on three areas--border security, humanitarian assistance, and prevention--to meet the most pressing needs. Of this total $659 million, $462 million is provided to increase security and enforce our laws, boosting personnel, and increasing detention space to the largest capacity in our history.

Part of this funding will help accelerate judicial proceedings by increasing the number of temporary judges and outfitting all immigration courtrooms in the Nation with teleconferencing equipment that would allow them to be able to join in the process of adjudicating those cases on the border. There are some 332 of those courtrooms around the country.

We have doubled existing funding for the National Guard to bolster their presence along our border, as they assist Customs and Border Protection with surveillance, investigations, and humanitarian efforts.

The bill also provides $197 million to take care of these unaccompanied children, ensuring they have proper housing, meals, and temporary care while they are in U.S. custody.

Madam Speaker, to stave off the continued influx of illegal immigration, the bill redirects existing State Department funding to ensure that countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador must quickly accept and repatriate those returning from the U.S.

This bill draws a hard line on spending, scrubbing the President's request to focus on the most immediate needs. It does not including funding for longer-term needs or unnecessary programs, like cash subsidies for coffee farmers. Any additional funding for this crisis can and should be addressed under the regular appropriations process for fiscal year 2015.

In addition, to make sure that this bill doesn't add a penny to our deficit, Madam Speaker, every dollar spent here is fully offset from somewhere else by making noncontroversial rescissions of unused, excess prior-year funds.

Lastly, the bill includes several policy provisions recommended by the Speaker's Working Group on the Border Crisis, led by the chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, Representative Kay Granger from Texas. She will speak soon.

This includes a change in a 2008 law to ensure that all unaccompanied minors arriving in this country are treated the same as Mexicans and Canadians for the purpose of removal.

It also strengthens the law prohibiting immigration status to criminals convicted of serious drug crimes and prohibits the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from restricting Customs and Border Protection apprehension activities on Federal land on the border, and it expresses congressional intent that detained aliens awaiting processing should not be housed on military installations.

Madam Speaker, this is a good bill. This is a fair, sensible, and reasonable address of the most immediate needs on the border. It also puts in place much-needed policy changes that should stop the flow of unaccompanied children who are being put at risk during their long, dangerous journey through Mexico.

It is our congressional duty to quickly pass this bill in short order. Therefore, I ask all Members to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, we have a crisis on our border with Mexico right now. It can't wait. It is a humanitarian crisis. It is also a failure of our border. It is an open border now unless you fix it. If we don't change the law to treat Central American children the same as we treat Mexican children at the border, you are going to be flooded. The amount now on the border will pale into insignificance because Homeland Security tells us they anticipate another 145,000 children next year, on top of the tens of thousands of adults and families flooding across that open border.

So we have an immediate crisis today. This bill is an urgently needed bill. It provides immediate funding for critical border security and these humanitarian needs. The money will be there immediately. If we do not pass this bill today, you are going to risk these resources running out. Then your hands will be tied. More and more immigrants will continue to flood across that border if you fail to act.

This bill will allow the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard to tighten security and restore the border. It will allow the Department of Justice to process the cases that may be needed more efficiently. It encourages repatriation in the countries from which these immigrants came, and it provides much-needed shelter and care for the thousands of unaccompanied children who have recently crossed that border.

We must act today before we leave town, not only to protect our borders, but to help these unaccompanied children who are being brought here by criminals, no less, on a long, dangerous, arduous journey, subject to abuse, injury, and death along the way. How can you turn away from these faces?

This bill directs responsible levels of resources toward the front line, toward the highest priority needs. The bill puts policy measures into place that keep criminals out of the country and helps encourage children not to make that very dangerous, life-threatening journey. The President's request would do nothing to enforce our laws and make this Nation a safer place.
Help the problem. Stop the crisis. This bill does it. Vote for it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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