Secure the Southwest Border Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. CUELLAR. Madam Speaker, I support full comprehensive immigration reform, but today's vote on this supplemental appropriation bill is to provide funding to ICE, Border Patrol, and other agencies to deal with the humanitarian crisis on the border, an area that I represent, an area where I live, an area where 42,000 out of the 58,000 unaccompanied kids have crossed.

The policy change in this bill is to get rid of a loophole in the 2008 law that the smugglers in Central America and Mexico have taken advantage of. All due process and legal protections are left intact under this proposed bill.

You will see under a CRS report that compares the current law to today's bill, you will see that the same due process and the same legal protections are left intact. In fact, I respectfully ask my colleagues in opposition to show me specifically where there is due process and legal protection that is taken away out of the bill. I yet have heard where it does this.

Madam Speaker, I have also asked my colleagues in opposition respectfully to sit down with me and offer their alternative solution or their legislative proposal to this border crisis and have yet to hear those solutions.

In this appropriation bill, we have to provide the funding to the Federal agencies to provide an early border, but we can no longer afford to play defense on the 1-yard line called the U.S.-Mexico border. We need to play defense on the 20-yard line, and this is why working with the Central American countries and working with Mexico to address the core issues and to fix and to fight these smugglers is vital.

I want to thank the men and women on the border that have defended our homeland, and I want to thank the border communities, the churches, and the nonprofits that have done so much to help these folks at the border. In

fact, I want to thank the chairman for allowing a provision for the border communities to seek reimbursement for the allowable expenses under this bill.

We cannot leave Washington today without putting the resources and the policy change to address the border crisis. We are sent here to address not the easy problems, but to address the hard problems.

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