Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate his working with me on this important issue.

I do want to say that I appreciate the floor staff and staff in the Parliamentarian's Office over the last few days. Obviously, we have had some interesting activities on the floor of the House that I think are important because I think it is important to vote and that this issue is important.

I do want to thank the staff for all of their hard work in support of what goes on on the floor. As a former staffer, I know the amount of time that goes into that.

Madam Speaker, I do believe that we should defeat the previous question. I do believe that we should move immediately to consideration of H.R. 3056, which my good friend from Alabama has put forward, as an important reflection of what the President and his Office of Management and Budget have asked for to deal with the humanitarian crisis at our border.

We have gone over quite a bit of what has been going on on our border. Lost in all of that are the people, the humanitarian reality of what is happening at the border, the children, moms, families; the lack of places to put people; a Border Patrol that is overwhelmed, literally overwhelmed trying to do its job to secure the border of the United States.

They literally don't know where to put people. They have them and they are going, ``What do I do with them?''

They have to follow the law. They have to try to do screenings. They have to try to do health screenings. They have to try to perform the basic functions of their duty. Yet, they don't have the resources necessary to do it because this body, for whatever reason, refuses to do that.

I know there are ongoing negotiations. There are ongoing conversations in the Senate and the House about trying to reach some agreement. But let's be honest: This has taken far too long since the President's initial request, leaving Border Patrol, ICE, and those who are dealing with this crisis at the border without the knowledge of whether they are going to have the resources necessary to do it and without any support for what they are doing today.

Today, somebody is going to be abused at the border. Some little girl, some family, is going to be abused at the hands of the cartels that have operational control of our border.

If you talk to anybody with deep knowledge of what is going on at the border, they know the cartels have operational control of our border. They are making hundreds of millions of dollars moving people, not just fentanyl, not just dangerous narcotics, but people. It is something that should end today.

We have the power, this body, to end it today. We should just call up H.R. 3056 and pass it. It would solve the problem. It would at least solve the problem of what they are dealing with in the humanitarian crisis.

What it won't do is solve the asylum problem. What it won't do is solve the catch-and-release problem. What it won't do is solve the problem of being able to take unaccompanied children safely back to families at home.

None of that will be solved in H.R. 3056. But H.R. 3056 is the bare minimum of what we ought to do in this body to ensure that people have the resources necessary to care for people when we are trying to manage a broken border overrun with crime, where communities in Texas are being ravaged, where yesterday a mayor came here and gave a press conference talking about car chases in the streets, where fentanyl is pouring across our border.

I urge this body to defeat the previous question and to move to H.R. 3056.

Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 364, I mistakenly voted ``no'' when I intended to vote ``yes''.

Amendment No. 97 Offered by Mr. Banks

Mr. Speaker, I rise today troubled that one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle compared the activities of the United States Government and Border Patrol on the southern border of the United States to concentration camps.

For the life me, I cannot understand why we have allowed discourse to get to this place where the efforts by Border Patrol to secure our border, to house children, to house women, to house families, to deal with the fact that the cartels are attacking our border and profiting while doing it, and trying to care for these people while we are trying to enforce our laws, comparing that to the horrors of World War II, and saying that my friend Hector Garza is somehow the Gestapo today, and comparing what is happening at the border to concentration camps.

I am really troubled and offended, and I think that the people of south Texas and Border Patrol are offended after what they are doing to try to defend the United States of America against cartels attacking the United States and profiting by moving people across the border.

Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Michigan, and I want to rise to offer my support for his tireless efforts on this topic, in particular.

It should not be a hard question that the American citizens, the people who live here afforded protections under our Constitution, should not be targeted unnecessarily, even when we are doing our appropriate job to target those who wish to do us harm abroad.

I believe that the amendment in question attempts to do just that, to ensure we have those tools to target those abroad while protecting American citizens, and I thank the gentleman for his efforts.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, the truth is the President of the United States shouldn't be forced to have to make the tough decisions of figuring out how to secure our border without support from this institution, but that is precisely what is happening. The President of the United States is having to look at a crisis on our border that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle just simply straight up refuse to acknowledge exists.

When I was down at the border in McAllen in January, I was told of about 200,000 people that would be apprehended; maybe 200,000 that would not be apprehended. And I was told 90 percent of that was going to come through McAllen, as opposed to Brownsville. Why? Because there is fencing in Brownsville.

I would ask my colleagues whether they have ever been to the border, in the cane, along the river, talking to Border Patrol when they are there at 11:00 at night, and they have radios that don't work; cell signals that don't work. They can't see the river because the cane is too thick. They have no roads that are lateral that run along the river, so they can move up and down the river to protect our border. They are down there by themselves, and the cartels have operational control of the river.

The Reynoso faction of the Gulf Cartel, they own it. They are making hundreds of millions of dollars moving people through McAllen right now. And right now, little girls are going to be abused on the journey because we bury our heads in the sand.

The President is trying to secure the border, and the Democrats, in another cynical attempt to stop security, are putting provisions and poison pills in this legislation to prevent the kind of security that is needed for our border. I, for the life of me, don't understand it.

I appreciate my colleague from Texas standing up and making this point that we should be preserving the ability of the President to be able to do his job in the absence of a Congress willing to do its job.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to consider a measure that I would like to speak about for 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, to be clear, my request was to call up H.R. 3056, a measure to make sure we have the funding necessary to end the border security crisis that the President and his Office of Management and Budget sent to the Congress. It is Mr. Rogers from Alabama's bill.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, is that session tomorrow that we would be meeting a pro forma session?

Will there be any amendments related to this current appropriations bill taken up during that time?

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I am here before a relatively empty Chamber, as is too often the case in the people's House, as I want to raise to the attention of the American people the absolute crisis and tragedy that is occurring on the southern border of the United States. It is unconscionable what we are allowing to occur.

As we speak today, a little girl and her mom will be abused on the journey through Mexico while this country, the most powerful nation in the history of the world, buries its head in the sand because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, in a cynical political gesture and move, refuse to actually take up the supplemental request from the President of the United States for $4\1/2\ billion to provide the beds and the resources necessary to deal with the crisis, and to start taking up the bills that we should take up to ensure we fix the asylum crisis that cartels are using for profit, and to fix the catch- and-release broken system that is allowing our system to be overrun, allowing communities in Texas to be overrun.

This is a tragedy, and it is unconscionable that this body will not address it.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, in light of the humanitarian crisis at our border and what is happening to the migrants who seek to come here and to the people of the United States of America, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 3056, an emergency supplemental to provide critically needed funding for the humanitarian crisis at the border, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, we are sitting here 10:30 at night, and I am mystified that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are preaching about this issue, which is already the policy of the administration, and yet we are not funding the $4.5 billion request from the administration to deal with the problem at hand.

Our border is being overrun. My friend from Texas knows this, we know it, if you go spend any time on the border. We had 144,000 people apprehended on our southern border. HHS has taken charge of nearly 41,000 unaccompanied alien children this year, a 57 percent increase from last year. I could go down stat after stat after stat.

Little girls are being abused on the journey and cartels are profiting while we ignore it. Talk to the mayor of Uvalde, Texas, and throughout the southern area of Texas, talk to the people about what is actually happening in the communities.

I cannot believe, for the life of me, that we can't come together in a bipartisan fashion to pass $4.5 billion to fund the necessary beds, to fund what is necessary to house these children.

When people talk about kids in cages, are they directly attacking Border Patrol? Have they spent time with Border Patrol who are trying to figure out whether a kid's dad is actually the dad or whether it is somebody who is using that child?

That is happening today while this body waxes on about whatever amendment we are throwing on the floor right now that is already part of the administrative policy. We are not actually addressing the problem. And the American people sent us here to do that: Oh, by the way, oh, no, we are demanding votes.

Heaven forbid this body votes. Heaven forbid we follow the Constitution, which says something about a quorum. Maybe we should actually be in this body voting on the things the American people sent us here to do, like secure the border and ensure the safe passage of migrants in the United States of America under our rule of law.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, it is 1:35 in the morning here on the East Coast.

I represent a district in Texas. Somewhere in Texas right now are a host of families and children who have no place to be put, nowhere to be put because we are not doing our job. Those are facts.

All the theater, all the grandstanding that is going to be pointed out here on the floor of the House of Representatives, those are the facts.

There is a child today who doesn't have a place to be put. We can't just take that child and put him or her someplace magical. We have to have a place to put him or her.

Today, right now, the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel is making hundreds of millions of dollars moving people--not just fentanyl, not just cocaine, not just heroin, although lots of that, too, but moving people.

Right now, somewhere in the United States of America, particularly probably in Houston or San Antonio, there is a stash house with children in it and people in it being held hostage to pay money back to the cartels.

If you don't believe it, go talk to the people in the Department of Public Safety in Texas and CBP and ICE in Texas. Talk to them. That is what is actually happening.

And how can we, with a straight face, say that we are the most powerful nation in the world and allow that to be happening at our border, while our asylum laws are being exploited by cartels for profit, asylum laws which we should have, but where people should go to ports of entry and have a path to come here? Instead, we allow them to be violated by cartels for profit, and cartels have operational control of our border.

I literally cannot comprehend how our colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe it is more appropriate to bury their heads in the sand of this Chamber and ignore this, ignore this problem, this real problem, where 144,000 people were apprehended in May. HHS has taken charge of nearly 41,000 UACs this year--41,000.

In December, 4,700 unaccompanied children were apprehended on the southern border. In May, 11,500 unaccompanied alien minor children were apprehended on the southern border. These are the actual numbers. Does that not matter?

Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Maryland. I appreciate my friend from New York's concern about this important issue that is obviously paramount for the Nation. Every State in the Union is touched by the tragedy of opioid abuse.

I do want to point out, as has, I think, been made clear by my colleagues and myself about our continued concern about our lack of appreciation and effort by this body to deal with the crisis at our border, that the impact on the opioid problem by the trafficking going on at our southern border is significant. I think we all agree on that. We all recognize that.

In fact, my colleague from New York and I have sat in Oversight hearings where we have had witnesses there where we talk about the massive increase over the last several years in the amount of narcotics that are coming through our southern border, and this is just something that I hope we can have a bipartisan understanding and agreement on about addressing and actually dealing with the concern.

According to Border Patrol's most recent data, through the end of May, they seized 144 pounds of fentanyl between ports of entry since October; 98 percent was seized on our southwest border.

Fentanyl, in a pack of sugar, is enough to kill everybody in this room. It is a very dangerous narcotic--144 pounds between ports of entry.

In 2018, U.S. Border Patrol seized 388 pounds of fentanyl.

6,162 ounces of heroin have been seized between the ports of entry in fiscal year 2019 alone; 444 pounds of cocaine in May of this year between the ports of entry. Office of Field Operations has seized 241,000 pounds of drugs, total.

Seventy thousand Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, and fentanyl played a large roll in that. Deaths involving fentanyl increased more than 45 percent in 2017, alone.

I could go through the stats and we can keep talking about it, but I would hope that, on an issue like this, where I believe very much in the heart of my colleague and what she is trying to accomplish with this amendment, that we could come to an agreement that the vast quantities of these narcotics, so much of it is coming across our southern border. In addition to, obviously, the prescription drug problems we have had and we have been dealing with and we are trying to deal with, we have got to address this problem.

The cartels, literally, have operational control of our border; and the consequences aren't just the profit on the back of people and children and what we are dealing with and the inability to house them, but it is in this, in the opioid crisis that we are all trying to deal with that is being supplied so much from both China and then through Mexico.

Madam Chair, I appreciate that, and I would only point out in response to my friend from New York, and recognizing that this is an HHS-related matter, that one of the issues we are trying to deal with with respect to HHS is the office of ORR in dealing with the children and dealing with the unaccompanied children that we don't have anyplace to house, and we are looking for $4\1/2\ billion to deal with the problem at our border, including dealing with ORR and the children who are being housed at HHS. That it is a very paramount issue, and I think it is relevant in this particular moment.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko) for her time and energy on this important issue. I thank my colleagues who have been speaking on the floor.

Madam Speaker, I have got to say, this bill, like my colleague from North Carolina just spoke of, is more of the same. It is more of the same political theater that we see day in and day out in this body, where we refuse to actually address the issues of the day.

We have 100,000 people pouring across the border of the United States per month who are apprehended--100,000. And then I watch with complete disbelief while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle dare to complain about how children are being housed, about how people are being housed when we don't have the facilities to do it, and they literally refuse to bring forward legislation to fund dealing with the problem.

I have never seen greater hypocrisy in this body, and that is saying something pretty profound. I don't know how Members can look, with a straight face, at the American people and say that this House is actually addressing this concern legitimately.

The Democrats are bringing forward a bill, now, under the idea of taking care of people who are here illegally--who, by the way, were given status by the President of the United States previously, illegally and unconstitutionally, as we proved in DAPA, which I was proud to litigate on behalf of Texas along with Attorney General Paxton, Solicitor General Scott Keller, where we won in the Fifth Circuit. We were upheld in the Supreme Court for DAPA, the DACA class was illegally and unconstitutionally granted status.

It matters what we do here; it matters what the government does; it matters that we follow the rule of law; and it matters that we not look at the American people and claim to be, in the false name of compassion, concerned about the migrants coming here when we have open borders that are exploiting these kids.

A little girl today is going to be raped on the journey coming up through Mexico while we pretend to care. When are we going to do something about it?

If we actually care about the people at the border right now, if we actually care, why wouldn't we fund beds right now?

Why wouldn't we fund immigration judges right now?

Why wouldn't we fix asylum laws right now, not to prevent asylum, but to match it up with the 88 percent who are found to be fraudulently claiming asylum once they go through the process and immigration judges look at it? Why wouldn't we fix that problem today?

Why are we empowering cartels to profit to the tune of $2 billion in 2018 by moving human beings across our border?

Why are we empowering 54 migrants being stashed in a stash house in Houston, Texas, by the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel while we do nothing about it, when we can?

We are the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Why don't we go to our southern border and address the problem rather than engaging in the political theater of this ridiculous bill?