No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act of 2025

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 176) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to aliens who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, supported, or otherwise facilitated the attacks against Israel, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 176.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, although our political differences these days are vast, there are still some things we come together on in this body. We certainly did so during the last session. One of them was an enduring opposition to Hamas and the terrorism they unleashed on innocent civilians in Israel more than 2 years ago.

Earlier this year, the barbaric inhumanity of Hamas was revealed again in the macabre and infuriating spectacle of returning the bodies to the Bibas family. We last saw Shiri Bibas alive on October 7, 2023, as she was seized, terrified and sobbing, begging for the lives of her two little boys as they were dragged into the hell on Earth that Hamas created. This February, their murdered bodies were treated as trophies, and later we learned in a final act of cruelty that Shiri's body had been substituted for another.

We all came together in this body last year and said that such monsters as these must never be admitted into our country, never given safe haven on our soil, and never tolerated where they are found.

H.R. 176 says that anyone associated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic jihad, in any capacity, or anyone who assisted these terrorist activities in any form, will not be allowed in this country under any circumstances, will be immediately removed if we do find them here, and under no circumstances will we allow them to receive any immigration benefit under our laws. We already single out Nazi collaborators and PLO terrorists. This simply adds Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to that list.

Madam Speaker, for reasons I find inexplicable, the Senate couldn't be bothered to take up this bill in the last session. They will hopefully find the time in this session.

Under current law, being a member of Hamas or associated with its barbaric attack against Israel is not an explicit ground of inadmissibility or removability. That is just not good enough. Anyone who gave them support in any form should never be allowed into this country.

During the Biden years, the number of known or suspected terrorists encountered at the Southwest border soared to nearly 400. Too many were allowed into this country. How many more were among the 2 million known gotaways is anybody's guess. How many more are among the 190,000 Afghans allowed into this country with minimal or no vetting is also anybody's guess. We found out last week that one is far too many.

Under the Biden administration, Hamas terrorists didn't even have to sneak in across the border. President Biden simply let them in through the front door.

As just one example, less than 2 months ago, Federal officials arrested a 33-year-old native of Gaza, who was living in Lafayette, Louisiana, for his alleged involvement in Hamas' attack against Israel on October 7.

After learning about the ongoing Hamas attack, the alleged terrorists gathered a group of fighters and stormed into Israel to join the barbarism. Less than a year later, he submitted a visa application, which the Biden administration quickly approved, and he was allowed to enter the United States.

After the October 7 attacks, Director Wray warned us that the FBI ``cannot, and [does] not, discount the possibility that Hamas . . . could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil.'' These words proved to be prophetic.

On June 1, 2025, Mohammed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national, attacked pro-Israeli demonstrators who were marching in Boulder, Colorado, in

support of the release of hostages held captive by Hamas. While shouting, ``Free Palestine,'' Soliman attacked the peaceful demonstrators with Molotov cocktails, resulting in the hospitalization of at least eight people who suffered burns and other injuries. At least one of the victims had survived the Holocaust.

According to the Justice Department, Soliman stated he planned the attack for more than a year. He ``wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead'' and would conduct the attack again if he had the chance. He, too, was able to enter the United States through the front door, this time with a tourist visa, under the Biden administration.

This can never be allowed to happen again, regardless of which party controls the executive branch. While we have a President who is committed to securing our borders, protecting our communities, and restoring the enforcement of our immigration laws, now is the time to act.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the gentleman says that the bill is unnecessary because terrorists are already covered under the Immigration and Nationality Act. This bill creates a new ground of removability and a new ground of inadmissibility for aliens who carried out, or participated in, or planned, or financed, or afforded material support to or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel beginning on October 7 of 2023.

In doing so, the bill treats the atrocities of October 7 on a par with the Immigration and Nationality Act's current treatment of Nazi persecution, genocide, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

Does anyone seriously argue that we should repeal the sanctions against persons who aided and abetted the Nazi's Holocaust?

If not, then why would they oppose extending the same sanctions to the Nazi's would-be, modern-day successors who just 2 years ago slaughtered more than 1,200 innocent civilians, including children, infants, and the elderly because they were Jewish?

Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close when the gentleman has completed, and I reserve the balance of my time.

First of all, I am not familiar with the case, so I can't comment on that directly. I am quite confident that we have an existing process for applying the law and a process for appealing the application of that law through a writ of habeas corpus in the judiciary if an individual seeks to contest it.

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

Madam Speaker, for 4 devastating years, our Nation suffered the largest illegal mass migration in history. For 4 devastating years, we were told that the laws had to be changed if we wanted to do anything about it, and in the meantime anyone who illegally entered our country could stay in our country and be supported by American taxpayers.

However, as President Trump said in this very Chamber and proved in his first weeks in office: We didn't new need new laws. We needed a new President.

The largest illegal mass migration in history must now be followed by the largest legal deportation and repatriation in history.

New laws would be helpful to prevent a future Joe Biden from making a mockery of our sovereignty and reopening our borders to the most violent criminal gangs, cartels, criminals, and terrorists on the planet, and it would be helpful to give a future President Donald Trump the added tools to quickly and expeditiously prevent these same groups from infiltrating our Nation, preying on our communities, and attacking our people.

This law will stop the Hamas terrorists and their supporters who perpetrated the most violent attack against innocent civilians since the Holocaust from entering our country, as we already sanctioned Nazi collaborators. Although they are a tiny fraction of those who do our country harm, at least it does that.

To the apologists of the Democrats' open-border policies who say that this is unnecessary and covered by other laws on the books, I would ask these two questions: First, if that were so, then where were those laws under Joe Biden?

Second, even if their argument was true and the legislation was entirely unnecessary, then why would they object to sending a strong message around the world that terrorists will get no quarter here?

Madam Speaker, if you have associated with Hamas, then you are persona non grata in America, as you should be in any corner of the world that values peace, justice, and human dignity.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, which took the lives of more than 1,200 innocent civilians, and the subsequent war of mass destruction in Gaza, have been nothing less than a catastrophe for humanity.

More than 70,000 people have been killed to date, including an estimated 20,000 children. Hostages kidnapped by Hamas were abused, shackled in cages, and isolated in underground tunnels--in some cases, for more than 2 years. Many were killed there.

According to UNICEF, the Gaza Strip is now home to the world's highest concentration of child amputees. More than 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed in the violence.

The world breathed a sigh of relief that a tenuous cease-fire was finally reached and that all the living hostages were returned home. Alas, the cease-fire continues to be breached. Violence and suffering continue to afflict the people of the region, including escalating vigilante settler violence in the West Bank.

Getting to a just and lasting peace in the region will require the creative leadership and hard work of statesmen and stateswomen. It is past time to break out of the brutal and circular logic of terrorism and violence and war and instead address the underlying political problems destabilizing the region. We must stay united around these goals and committed to the continuation of a strong peace process.

Madam Speaker, in the meantime, we must all agree to the aim of this bill, which passed the House with bipartisan support in the last Congress. No one affiliated with Hamas, nor anyone involved in the horrific and lawless attacks of October 7, should be admissible to the United States or eligible for any immigration benefits whatsoever. That is an obvious point of political and moral consensus in our Chamber.

However, I am afraid this is another missed opportunity for us to work across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion because it departs dramatically from the Judiciary Committee's traditional practice. This bill is essentially what we call a visa sanctions bill. For decades, we have relied on pre-negotiated, bipartisan, and bicameral texts for every such visa sanctions bill. This legislation today departs from this bipartisan practice by directly amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, the INA, to impose visa sanctions.

To put into perspective just how anomalous this approach is, consider our response to the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath of that catastrophe, we revised our immigration laws to overhaul significant parts of our immigration system, and we created the Department of Homeland Security. Even then, we did not amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to specifically reference the events of September 11 or to bar the individuals involved in the planning or commission of those outrageous terror attacks from entering or remaining in the United States.

The reason for that is plain. The laws that we have in place already bar noncitizens who engage in terrorism or are involved with terrorist organizations from entering the United States. For any of those noncitizens who happen to be here, our laws clearly allow us to remove them and prevent them from obtaining any immigration benefits.

These laws were designed to apply broadly to any individual or organization engaged in terrorism without having to specify them by reference to specific historical events or attacks.

Under sections 212(a)(3)(B) and 237(a)(4)(B) of the INA, any noncitizen who has engaged in any terrorist activity, provided any material support to terrorists, or is a member or representative of a terrorist group or organization that enforces or espouses terrorist activity is presently inadmissible to the United States and is presently deportable. Hamas has been designated as such a terrorist group since 1997.

We already plainly have the legal tools to keep any noncitizen involved with Hamas, as well as any noncitizen who was involved in the horrific terror attacks of October 7, out of this country forever or to deport them from the United States if they are already somehow here.

This approach is, alas, symptomatic of the syndrome we just discussed in the last bill of the proliferation of redundant legislation and redundant language simply to make a point.

The Judiciary Committee's standard visa sanctions language, which was carefully crafted with the majority and minority on both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, would allow us to achieve all the aims of this legislation without departing from negotiated sanctions language and amending the INA in an unprecedented and incongruous way.

Amending the INA to impose visa sanctions sets a strange and potentially self-defeating precedent where new statutory language becomes necessary every time a new terrorist group or event emerges.

Nonetheless, we strongly support this legislation today, whose purpose is incontestable and essential. I hope we can both pass this bill and return to our bipartisan and bicameral practice for dealing with visa sanctions whenever the occasion presents itself.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, again, we restate our support for this bill and its purposes and only hope that we can return to the traditional visa sanctions method of dealing with particular events. In the meantime, I wonder if the gentleman would yield for a question.

I wonder how this legislation with the new language would apply to the case of Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of the crypto firm Binance, who was prosecuted for and convicted of and sentenced to jail for taking money from a number of terrorist groups, among them Hamas, as part of his crypto venture. He was convicted of violating the Bank Secrecy Act and turning a blind eye to terrorists, including Hamas, cybercriminals, and child abusers.

I am wondering if the new language would cover Changpeng Zhao, who just

received a pardon from President Trump.

Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Madam Speaker, again, I strongly support this legislation. We need to be doing whatever we can to eliminate terrorist forces and those who are providing critical material support to terrorist forces all over the world, which is why I raised the case of Changpeng Zhao, who is the former CEO of the crypto firm Binance, who was recently pardoned by President Trump.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of H.R. 4429, the Developing and Empowering our Aspiring Leaders Act, or DEAL Act, which is a critical bill to support innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital formation.

The venture capital industry provides vital funding for early-stage startups at points in their life cycle when they are generally deemed to be too risky for traditional bank financing or for raising money on the public market. This basically means that if we are going to have a growing and innovative economy, then we have to have a healthy venture capital sector.

Historically, venture capital earns investor returns and frees up more capital to recycle in other companies by selling their mature portfolio companies to strategic investors or taking them public on public markets.

For a variety of reasons, including public company reporting obligations, economic uncertainty, and the rise of private equity, U.S. companies today are staying private much longer, which has reduced the opportunities for venture capital firms to recycle their investment dollars.

Some venture capital firms have sought to create new liquidity options through secondary acquisitions and investments in other VC funds. This is what Congresswoman Wagner was referring to, but that option right now is constrained by provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that limit venture capital funds' ability to invest in these so- called fund of funds to only 20 percent of their commitments.

That rule was very well-intentioned when passed, and the intent was to ensure that VC firms remained focused on direct investments in early-stage startups. However, it was crafted for a very different financial market than we have today.

I would also note that that constraint is irrelevant to the larger, more well-known VC funds who have the resources to shoulder the compliance burdens associated with registering with the SEC as registered investment advisers. They can already do this, but they are the big ones. They are the ones based in San Francisco and New York. That option isn't available for these emerging regional fund managers located in the middle of the country. Many of those funds increasingly depend on that fund-of-funds model.

What the DEAL Act does is just provides greater flexibility to those smaller VC funds while still ensuring that investors are protected and that fund managers continue to prioritize direct funding in small businesses. It does this by revising the existing rules to raise the cap from 20 percent in fund of funds up to 49 percent but still requiring that the majority of their investments are directly in portfolio companies.

In other words, the DEAL Act supports growth in the startup economy and ensures that capital reaches the communities and innovators who need it most.

I thank my fellow Midwesterner and friend, Congresswoman Wagner, for her leadership on this. I am proud to lead this important legislation, and I urge all my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to sponsor H.R. 4429, the Developing and Empowering our Aspiring Leaders, or DEAL, Act.

This bill, which passed with almost unanimous support out of the Financial Services Committee, seeks to ensure the United States remains the most entrepreneurial country in the world, where the next great companies are founded and funded.

It is often said that small businesses are the engine of the American economy, and that is an absolute truth. Small businesses make up 99 percent of U.S. employers, and they are the driving force behind the creation of a majority of new jobs.

The entrepreneurs leading these companies are building something new, taking real risks, and driving growth in communities across the Nation, but too often, they can't get a fair shot at investment.

Right now, our capital markets suffer from an extreme geographic imbalance. The data is stark. Nearly 70 percent of venture capital flows to three States, Mr. Speaker: California, New York, and Massachusetts.

This leaves entire regions of the country struggling to access funding. It leaves communities in the Midwest and the South without the capital they need to build and scale businesses. Access to capital is not just a coastal issue. It is a national economic necessity.

This capital divide is why the DEAL Act is so critically important. This bill is a targeted, forward-looking effort to modernize outdated rules and channel investment to where it is needed most.

The DEAL Act fundamentally strengthens the ability of capital to reach more founders and more communities. It achieves this by allowing larger venture funds to invest directly in smaller, regional funds, a fund-of-funds investment.

This mechanism is a game changer, Mr. Speaker. It means more funding for startups, more opportunities for businesses that might otherwise be overlooked, and more innovation happening everywhere, not just in a handful of elite ZIP Codes.

Newer, regional venture funds are often best positioned to back the entrepreneurs who are building businesses on Main Street. The DEAL Act ensures that these funds can expand that important work, giving them the flexibility to partner with larger institutions to reach a wider base of early-stage companies.

H.R. 4429 ensures our policies are helping capital move efficiently and effectively, empowering those taking risks to build something new, and helping good ideas grow into great companies.

I thank Chairman Hill for his support, and also I thank Congressman Casten for joining me and co-leading this commonsense and bipartisan piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague Mr. Davidson for his broad work in the capital market space and for leading us here on the floor today.

I rise to urge my colleagues to support the Expanding WKSI Eligibility Act. I thank my co-leads, Mr. Fields, as well as Chairman Hill and Ranking Member Waters, for their support.

We have far too many regulations in the United States, and this bill is about rightsizing our regulations in support of investments and jobs.

This commonsense bill will help more well-run companies responsibly raise money in the public markets. It rightsizes regulatory burdens and frees up more resources for companies to invest in American jobs and American innovation.

The well-known seasoned issuer--also known as WKSI--status was first implemented around 20 years ago. It allows qualified public companies in good standing to use automatic shelf registration. This reduces the cost and complexity of a public offering and allows companies to be more responsive to market conditions.

The WKSI construct has a track record of success in expanding access to public markets while protecting investors.

According to Joel Trotter, one of the authors of the JOBS Act, ``Decades of successful experience show that the well-known seasoned issuer category is long overdue for expansion.''

I couldn't agree more, and this bill does exactly that. It lowers the size threshold for WKSI qualification while maintaining all the existing good governance requirements.

In other words, more small and midsized American public companies will be able to benefit from the privileges that already exist for larger businesses with similar compliance records.

The Expanding WKSI Eligibility Act also includes a helpful reporting requirement for the Securities and Exchange Commission. This report will provide Congress and the public with a better understanding of how many previously ineligible companies are trying to regain their WKSI status. Doing so will gain the insight needed to make future legislative adjustments.

The Expanding WKSI Eligibility Act is a tailored, regulatory improvement

that will support small and midsized businesses, job creators, and investments.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support this legislation.