Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, here we are again, debating another partisan bill that promotes fearmongering about immigrants, instead of working together to fix the immigration system.

I probably shouldn't be too surprised. Scapegoating immigrants and attempting to weaponize the crime of domestic violence is appearing to be a time-honored tradition for Republicans.

The Trump administration reversed protections for asylum seekers who were fleeing unspeakable domestic violence in their home countries, and that is exactly what will happen again under another Trump Presidency as described in Trump's Project 2025.

Aminta Cifuentes is emblematic of the many survivors of gender-based violence who would be harmed by this legislation.

For over 10 years, Aminta Cifuentes' husband beat, raped, and tormented her. He tried to set her on fire. It resulted in her permanent hearing loss. He once hit her so hard that she gave birth prematurely, and she still has difficulty breathing and speaking.

Ms. Cifuentes tried to get protection from Guatemalan law enforcement multiple times, but the police dismissed her complaints as marital problems.

When she tried to leave her husband, he hunted her down. She finally fled to the United States where even here, her husband's threats still followed her.

This is exactly the kind of person that apparently my Republican colleagues do not think deserves protection.

Back in 2013 when the Senate passed its bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform legislation with 68 votes, it was then blocked by the Republican Speaker of the House because he knew that it would pass if it were to come to a vote.

That legislation would have legalized 10 million people, updated the legal immigration system, and added significant amounts of new enforcement.

One of the provisions that was forced in by Senate Republicans actually included a section making the crime of domestic violence a new inadmissibility ground.

We supported that provision because it also contained important exceptions to protect survivors of domestic violence. There are absolutely no such protections in this legislation.

This misguided bill would take the Violence Against Women Act definition of domestic violence and weaponize it into grounds for deportation.

Let me be clear: VAWA, or the Violence Against Women Act, is landmark legislation, and it is actually a testament to a time when Democrats and Republicans could come together and legislate on issues of fundamental importance to this Nation, despite our differences.

The initial iteration of VAWA passed the House by voice vote. It was a significant law. It reshaped how we as a country talk about gender- based violence and how we treat survivors.

Now, we have to fight tooth and nail to reauthorize it, and Republicans regularly let it languish, expired now for 3 years.

While VAWA is a great law, its definition was never meant to capture criminal conduct. In fact, it explicitly says in the definition itself that it intends to capture conduct that may or may not be criminal.

There is a reason that advocacy organizations for domestic violence survivors are coming out in droves to oppose this legislation.

They know how this expanded definition will harm survivors and create a chilling effect for reporting future crimes.

There are so many reasons why individuals in domestic violence situations

are forced into the criminal legal system.

Too often, survivors are arrested alongside their abuser, and they are charged and even convicted of crimes involving violence. Using this definition makes it more likely that we harm the very people that we want to protect.

In that same vein, this bill also has no waivers or exceptions. Under current law, any crime involving moral turpitude, which would cover much of the conduct in this bill, is eligible for a waiver if the individual can meet very strict criteria.

Current law also has specific and important options for waivers for survivors when dealing with a conviction for domestic violence or stalking.

These allow the government to waive a conviction if certain criteria are met, including showing that the individual was not the primary perpetrator, and that the crime was committed in self-defense.

Unfortunately, the Republican majority is attempting to add a new inadmissibility ground, and they don't even require a conviction or include any waivers. This makes absolutely no sense.

As it is, domestic violence survivors say that these waivers are not as strong as they could be, but to not include them at all shows a shocking lack of empathy and understanding of what survivors of domestic violence experience.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering that this is the same party supporting a man who was found liable for sexual assault and bragged about grabbing and forcibly kissing women without their consent.

Last week, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of VAWA's enactment, and now, as Trump's Project 2025 threatens to decimate key protections enshrined in VAWA, congressional Republicans are attempting to contort the law to hurt the very people it was designed to protect. What a disgrace.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this misleading bill.

Mr. Speaker, I missed Roll Call votes No. 356, 357, and 358 on July 22, 2024. Had I been present, my votes would have been: Yea on Roll Call No. 356; Nay on Roll Call No. 357; and Yea on Roll Call No. 358.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution.

Here we go again. The Republican majority made their appropriations bills so extreme that they can't pass the vast majority of them with votes from their own party. Instead, we are going to come here to the floor and waste our time as they politicize the work that we are doing here in Congress and use this time to attack the Vice President.

They can't pursue their impeachment claims, their fake impeachment claims of Joe Biden, or any other number of people that they have targeted, because Joe Biden is no longer running for President. Now, they have got to quickly shift and instead use their time on this floor, where we are supposed to be doing official business, to attack Vice President Harris days after she is clearly going to be our Democratic nominee for President.

Kamala Harris was never the border czar. She was never asked to address the situation at the border. She was asked to do something that MAGA extremists, who want quick fixes that they can give to FOX News, never want to focus on, and that is a real solution.

She was narrowly tasked with developing agreements that could help bring government and private-sector investments to those countries that are sending migrants to the United States, so that those countries could help strengthen the conditions in those countries. She did so, most significantly in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

She brought in billions from private-sector investments to support government funding for entrepreneurs, to ensure labor rights, to strengthen food security, and launch projects across those countries that invested in financial inclusion, healthcare, climate finance, and affordable housing. Those are the things that will keep migrants in their home countries.

The only reason that Republicans are doing this today is to distract the American people from the fact that they still can't get anything done here on the House floor that will actually benefit the American people. It is no wonder. The leader of their party has been convicted on 34 felony counts and has a Trump Project 2025 agenda that will take total control over people's lives.

That agenda includes plans for mass deportations, including spouses and children of U.S. citizens, Dreamers, and essential workers and farm workers.

Let's not forget that roughly 22 million people in America live in mixed-status families where at least one person is undocumented. When Donald Trump and Republicans are talking about mass deportations, they are talking about tearing apart American families.

It doesn't end there. Trump's Project 2025 calls for the end of protections for Dreamers and family-based immigration. Attacking family unity comes as no surprise from the party that cruelly tore over 5,000 kids from their moms and dads. Trump's Project 2025 also eliminates due process in the immigration system. It would deny people their day in court to make their case for protection under U.S. laws. Republicans have made it clear over and over again that they do not want to modernize our immigration system.

Even the bill that was written by the second-most conservative Republican Senator in the U.S. Senate, Trump told them not to vote for it, so they didn't because they wanted to keep it out there as an election issue.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans want to distract you from the fact that the Biden-Harris administration has been the most effective administration in my lifetime, investing in infrastructure and green jobs, taking on climate change, bringing down the cost of prescription drugs, and canceling student loan debt so people have more money in their pockets instead of allowing billionaires to profit off your pain.

Just today we heard that the economy grew by 2.8 percent in the second quarter showing extraordinary strength because of the policies that President Biden and Vice President Harris have put into place for this country.

Don't be distracted, Mr. Speaker. Democrats want to protect your freedoms, uphold democracy, and give every American a real chance to succeed.

Vote ``no'' on this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the rule and in strong support of the Women's Health Protection Act.

The Women's Health Protection Act would protect the right to abortion nationwide. It would restore the intensely personal freedom for pregnant people to make decisions about their own bodies.

That is the complete opposite of Trump's Project 2025, the extremist Republicans' agenda for their policies that they want to advance.

Trump's Project 2025 outlines a whole-of-government approach to eliminate the right to abortion. It restricts access to contraception. It calls for the Federal Government to stop enforcing laws that require hospitals to provide emergency care to pregnant people in need of an abortion.

Let me just be clear, Mr. Speaker. This fight is about our fundamental freedoms, the freedom to make choices about our own bodies, our own health, and our own economic future.

I am standing here as one of the one-in-four women in America who has had an abortion myself. I can tell you that these decisions are intensely personal. We do not need an extreme Republican Party trying to control our freedoms.

In my case, I had already experienced a very difficult pregnancy, and my daughter was born prematurely at 26\1/2\ weeks. She was actually just 1 pound, 14 ounces. She was about the size of my hand. She weighed about the same as a small squash, and she literally almost did not survive. My doctors told me that if I were to have another pregnancy it would be extremely high risk both for me and for the child. Hence, I took my daily contraceptive pill that Republicans are trying to get rid of for Americans across this country so that I could protect my health and the health of any future pregnancies.

In fact, what happened was I got pregnant anyway, and my doctor said: You really should have an abortion.

I made that decision with my doctor and with my family.

Why should anyone else be a part of that decision?

It was a hard decision for me, but for every person it should be their choice.

Donald Trump has bragged that he did a ``great job'' getting rid of Roe v. Wade. Well, thanks Donald Trump. Thanks to Donald Trump, one in three women in this country of childbearing age now live in a State with an abortion ban. Thanks to Republicans, a woman who was 20 weeks pregnant when her water broke was told by doctors that the pregnancy was not viable, but still she was not provided the fundamental freedom to do what she needed to do for her health. She was forced to go through the pain of delivering a stillborn child.

Trump's Project 2025 and the Republican policy agenda tells millions of families across this country who want to plan their families that they can't even use contraception or IVF.

This is not theoretical. This is very real.

Just last week J.D. Vance became Donald Trump's running mate; J.D. Vance who thinks abortion is ``comparable'' to slavery, J.D. Vance who has criticized exceptions for even rape and incest, and wants to help Trump and Republicans enact a nationwide abortion ban.

Democrats have a completely different vision. It is in the Women's Health Protection Act, and that is to defend and protect your fundamental freedoms.

Vote ``no'' on this motion.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to support the Biden administration's new Title IX rule that recognizes every student deserves to feel safe and explicitly prohibits discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics in schools.

Protecting kids should not be controversial. Allowing parents to parent their kids without interference from the Federal Government should not be controversial.

This cruel attack on LGBTQIA youth from congressional Republicans is just the precursor to the Republicans' Project 2025, a horrific roadmap for a Trump Presidency that would reverse foundational freedoms and destroy our democracy. This 1,000-page manifesto would gut protections for the LGBTQIA+ community and attacks marriage equality, offensively claiming that same-sex marriages are less ``stable'' than so-called ``traditional families.''

According to a 2024 survey from the Trevor Project, in the last year, almost half of the LGBTQIA+ youth experienced bullying, and over a third have seriously considered attempting suicide.

The Biden administration's rule is a critical step to supporting our LGBTQIA+ students and ensuring that they have the rights and protections to be who they are without fear of retaliation, bullying, or discrimination.

I am proud to represent Seattle in Congress. I am proud to be the mom of a transgender daughter. I know the importance of protecting the LGBTQIA+ community from discrimination and harassment. Washington State has had these exact protections for LGBTQIA+ youth for 18 years. That is right, 18 years. Our State is a clear example that protecting all kids, no matter how they identify, is good policy that makes our schools safer for everyone.

Republicans' cruel attempt to repeal President Biden's new Title IX rule, fueled by fear tactics and misinformation, tells already vulnerable children in schools that they do not belong. No one, no child, should have to hide who they are to be accepted.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' against this hateful resolution.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, my bipartisan amendment would prevent funding from this bill to be used to require the Defense Department to create what is called an unfunded priorities list.

This list that DOD is required to send to Congress is simply a wish list of things that individual commanders and generals would like to fund. It has not gone through the level of prioritization and vetting that all of the other things that come in the budget do.

In preparing the White House budget request, the Commander in Chief, in consultation with top military brass, determines what is necessary to defend the country based on a holistic analysis of our national security needs. By definition, anything that is in an unfunded priorities list has already been determined to be extraneous by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This practice, that wasn't even mandatory until the passage of the FY17 NDAA, does not serve the national security interests of the United States or the interests of our taxpayers.

These wish lists are packed with billions of dollars of excessive line items, this year totaling more than $27.5 billion on top of the $850 billion requested by the White House and a 50 percent increase from last year.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bipartisan and commonsense amendment, and I thank my Republican colleagues, Congressmen McClintock and Davidson, as well as Congressman Garamendi who have joined me to rein in this wasteful spending that has no benefit to our national security.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), my distinguished colleague and the ranking member.

Mr. Chair, I understand that it is critical for Congress to engage with the Pentagon to accurately meet our country's national security needs, but we don't have to spend billions of dollars on wish lists and what-ifs to accomplish that.

I say that the ranking member is absolutely right. If this is such a great idea for this agency, let's do it for all the agencies. If it is not a great idea for all the agencies, we shouldn't be doing it for the Department of Defense.

Let's be clear. If military leaders want more funding for their wish list, there is nothing in this amendment that would prevent DOD from supplying an unfunded priorities list to Congress, but this process should be optional, just as it was 8 years ago.

On top of that, most combatant commanders already testify before Congress ahead of the appropriations process so Congress can understand their needs without these wish lists that undercut the President's budget request.

By law, individual generals and commanders are required to go around the Commander in Chief and military leadership to Congress to ask for superfluous line items that serve mainly to line the pockets of defense contractors. This is corruption, plain and simple.

These lists get in the way of our military's stated priorities. For example, the House passed NDAA authorized funding for some of the Army's unfunded priorities while making substantial cuts to the requested amounts for the Army's three largest accounts.

This is despite Army Chief of Staff General Randy George specifically requesting that none of the Army's unfunded priorities displace anything on the Army's FY25 budget request.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this sensible, bipartisan amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dr. Jeffrey Duchin who is retiring after a thirty-year career in public health, most recently as the Health Officer for Public Health--Seattle & King County.

Dr. Duchin began working at Public Health--Seattle & King County in 1994 on assignment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to handle the Tuberculosis and HIV programs. Four years later, Dr. Duchin served as the Public Health--Seattle & King County Chief of Vaccination and Communicable Disease Epidemiology, a position he held until he was named Health Officer in 2015. He has lent his expertise to numerous national policy and advisory bodies where he helped shape approaches to immunizations and infectious diseases. Dr. Duchin is also a longtime Professor at the University of Washington's Schools of Medicine and Public Health. In this capacity, he provides mentorship to students and publishes research on communicable disease. His contributions to infectious disease research will undoubtedly leave a mark on the field for years to come.

Dr. Duchin's outstanding work helped King County and Washington State navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and better prepare for public health emergencies. In 2020, King County experienced America's first known COVID-19 case and the first large outbreak. Dr. Duchin immediately stepped into action and his leadership was nationally recognized. During this time, Dr. Duchin prioritized community engagement and solutions that centered equity. My staff and I partnered closely with Public Health--Seattle & King County during the pandemic. Dr. Duchin's invaluable expertise, frequent updates and excellent communication were essential for the intergovernmental partnerships that supported our communities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Duchin's prioritization of science and deep understanding of the intersectionality of health saved countless lives.

Dr. Duchin's tireless commitment to public health has benefitted the lives of so many in King County and beyond. His leadership will serve as a model for Washington State's leaders for years to come. I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating his many accomplishments and contributions to public health. On behalf of Washington's 7th Congressional District, I thank Dr. Jeffrey Duchin for his service to the people of the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Speaker, I missed Roll Call votes 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, and 275 on June 13, 2024, due to illness. Had I been present, my votes would have been:

Nay on Roll Call No. 261; Nay on Roll Call No. 262; Nay on Roll Call No. 263; Yea on Roll Call No. 264; Nay on Roll Call No. 265; Nay on Roll Call No. 266; Nay on Roll Call No. 267; Nay on Roll Call No. 268; Nay on Roll Call No. 269; Nay on Roll Call No. 270; Nay on Roll Call No. 271; Nay on Roll Call No. 272; Nay on Roll Call No. 273; Nay on Roll Call No. 274; and Nay on Roll Call No. 275.

Mr. Speaker, I missed Roll Call No. 253 on June 12, 2024. Had I been present, my vote would have been Nay.

Mr. Speaker, I missed Roll Call votes 219 and 220 on May 21, 2024, and 221 and 222 on May 22, 2024. Had I been present, my votes would have been: Yea on Roll Call No. 219; Yea on Roll Call No. 220; Nay on Roll Call No. 221; and Nay on Roll Call No. 222.

Mr. Chair, may I ask how much time is remaining.

Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, while you may not know it from some of the language that is being used today, we are debating a poorly written ``reporting bill'' that will do nothing.

This bill is full of empty rhetoric, it makes no policy changes to address the outdated immigration system, and it provides no funding of any kind.

All this bill does is attempt to produce a onetime politically motivated report on the so-called Biden border crisis, just one report. That is it.

Give me a break.

Even though the entire bill is focused on reporting requirements related to the ``Biden border crisis,'' the bill doesn't even define the term.

It is as if we needed more proof that this is not serious legislation and that it is more about messaging than congressional oversight of the executive branch.

Why are we continuing to waste our time marking up these meaningless messaging bills?

I have said this before, and I am going to say it again because the same resolutions keep coming up over and over again, so I feel as if I need to repeat myself.

The situation at the border is directly linked to the fact that the legal immigration system has not been modernized in 30 years. It has been left in chaos because it has not been updated to meet the needs of our country today.

When the legal process is so outdated that it takes decades for green card holders to get their children into the country, or when employers simply can't get visas for the people that they need to hire because 2 million people are in processing backlogs, or when we have so few immigration judges that asylum seekers wait over 8 years to get their cases heard, then people turn to unscrupulous actors, including the cartels. The cartels promise desperate people that they can escape dangerous situations by paying cartels to get them in to seek safety by crossing the border.

If my colleagues on the other side were serious about addressing the situation, Republicans would work with us to fix the immigration system to provide people with workable ways to immigrate.

That would disempower the cartels. It would ensure the integrity of the border. It would give us what we all want, which is order at the border that is fueled and made possible by a legal immigration system that works and a legal immigration system that provides pathways for people to come to work here, to be with their families, and to contribute to our economy.

That is what we need right now, but here we are. Instead of that, we are defending a bill with no chance of becoming law or solving the problem. Republicans are showing clearly what we Democrats have been saying over and over again, that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to do anything that would help fix the broken immigration system. Instead of solving the problem, Republicans want to continue to weaponize the border as a political issue for this election year.

Rather than debating meaningless bills, we should be exploring how to meaningfully reform the broken immigration system and expand lawful immigration to the United States, given the very clear and documented benefits that that brings.

In 2021 alone, DACA recipients paid $6.5 billion in taxes; refugees paid almost $28 billion in taxes; and TPS holders paid $2.2 billion in taxes. Likewise, in 2021, undocumented immigrants paid approximately $18.6 million in Federal income taxes and $12.2 billion in State and local taxes.

Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services released a study demonstrating that refugees and asylees generated $124 billion in fiscal benefits over 15 years, and the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan entity, recently released a report finding that recent immigrants who joined the workforce will actually add $1 trillion of revenue to our country's GDP between 2023 and 2034.

It is also estimated that putting undocumented immigrants on a roadmap to citizenship would not only increase U.S. GDP by $1.7 trillion over the next decade, but that action would also raise wages for all Americans and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Unfortunately, Republicans talk a big game when it comes to immigration and border security, but instead of trying to pass thoughtful, bipartisan legislation to address problems in our immigration system, my colleagues waste our time on bills like the ones before us today.

Members don't have to just take it from me. The fact is that the second most conservative Republican Senator in the United States Senate crafted a bill with some Democratic support to put forward before us on immigration reform, and Republicans decided that the majority didn't even want to consider that bill or vote on that bill. Do my colleagues know why? Because Donald Trump told them not to because it would take away what Republicans see as an election issue.

I believe the American people are smarter than that.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this meaningless bill and to see very clearly that Republicans are not interested in solutions, in governing, but are just interested in meaningless messaging bills to try to divide us when we really should be celebrating the tremendous benefits that immigrants contribute to our country every single day.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment furthers the major drafting problems in this legislation by asking the Attorney General to report on how the so-called Biden border crisis impacted law enforcement recruiting.

As I said earlier, there is no definition for the ``Biden border crisis,'' and this amendment highlights just how unserious this legislation is.

How on Earth is the Attorney General supposed to determine how the border impacts law enforcement recruitment? Are local law enforcement agencies going to have to go to all the candidates who turned down job offers and ask them if their decision was influenced by the border?

This bill is a huge waste of time, and this amendment serves only to make this poorly drafted bill even more incomprehensible. I, therefore, oppose its adoption, and I encourage my colleagues to oppose it, as well.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.

Mr. Chairman, the Nunn amendment requires the Attorney General to report on how much each State spent on investigating fentanyl trafficked through the border.

I do not oppose this amendment because it does not repeat the same misleading talking points that Republicans often use when discussing fentanyl, and I am grateful to my colleague across the aisle for that.

I did want to make a couple of points on this because I think fentanyl is such an important issue in all of our districts. It is a scourge on all of our districts, all of our communities. We are all seeing the effects of fentanyl that is coming into this country.

We know that fentanyl is being smuggled into our country and that some of it comes through our southern border, but I do want to make clear that fentanyl is seized primarily at the ports of entry.

In fiscal year 2023, CBP seized approximately 27,000 pounds of fentanyl. Less than 10 percent of the drugs were actually seized by Border Patrol. The vast majority, roughly 90 percent of the drugs, were seized by the Office of Field Operations, which is the entity that mans the ports of entry.

I will be clear that the evidence does not show in any way that asylum seekers are bringing drugs to our shores. In fact, increasingly, drug cartels are being very smart about this. They are recruiting American citizens to bring drugs across the border through ports of entry. In 2022, over 89 percent of convicted fentanyl traffickers were American citizens.

If my Republican colleagues were serious about stopping the flow of fentanyl, the flow of drugs across the border, then I think we should be giving additional resources to the agencies that are manning those ports of entry.

Instead, all but six current House Republicans voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which provided additional funding to ports of entry to combat the smuggling of people and drugs. All but two current House Republicans voted against providing robust funding for border security operations in the 2023 appropriations omnibus legislation, which provided more than $17 billion to Customs and Border Protection, including funding for an additional 300 Border Patrol agents.

The omnibus also included $60 million to hire 125 CBP officers and $70 million for nonintrusive inspection technology to detect narcotics and firearms at ports of entry. That is exactly the kind of technology that our Border Patrol agents are asking us for.

Republicans have also refused to consider President Biden's emergency supplemental funding request for additional border resources, which included $239 million to hire 1,000 additional CBP officers to stop fentanyl and other contraband from entering the United States. It included $100 million for ICE/Homeland Security Investigations to investigate and disrupt transnational criminal organizations and drug traffickers, and it included $849 million for cutting-edge detection technologies at ports of entry.

This is the work the Democrats have been doing to try to address the scourge of fentanyl that is coming across our southern border and coming into our country by supporting law enforcement and stopping that fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a huge problem in our communities. It is important that we support our law enforcement in fighting against it. This amendment would simply inform Congress about how much States are spending to combat fentanyl and, therefore, I see no reason to oppose it.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment requires the Attorney General to report on how local officers and resources have been reallocated to combat fentanyl trafficked through the border. I do not oppose the amendment because the amendment itself, like the previous amendment, does not repeat the same misleading talking points. I was ready to give my colleague across the aisle some credit again, but, unfortunately, the same misleading talking points were just repeated in talking about the amendment.

Fentanyl is not coming across the southern border because of some failed border policy. It is coming across the southern border primarily carried by American citizens at ports of entry.

This is about providing resources to our law enforcement officers on the southern border to be able to have the technology to detect that fentanyl. It is about providing enough people so that they can actually do the kind of monitoring that they are asking for. It is about providing the resources that Democrats put forward as the answer to this question and Republicans oppose time and time again.

I will be very clear that I appreciate the data that we are getting because fentanyl is a scourge. I have gone out with my local firefighters across Seattle multiple times, and I will tell you that 99 percent of their calls are responding to fentanyl overdoses, to opioid overdoses, and it is heartbreaking to see what is happening.

In fact, in my first year, I worked with Speaker Mike Johnson on a bipartisan allocation of money to provide other ways of dealing with overdoses due to opioids and fentanyl on the streets by actually providing supportive services for law enforcement so law enforcement wasn't having to deal with all of this. I don't think that this is something that the majority of our law enforcement members want to be dealing with in our cities.

I just want to be clear: We should be fighting the scourge of fentanyl. We should be doing it in a bipartisan way. We should not be doing it as part of some legislation that is meaningless, that puts the blame for what is happening with fentanyl on some ``Biden border policy that has failed.''

Combating fentanyl should be a priority for all of us regardless of what side of the aisle we are on. We should not repeat the talking points that are divisive and untrue in talking about this issue.

Fentanyl seizures shot up during the Trump administration and have continued to rise during the Biden administration. It is a bipartisan problem. Fentanyl poisoning is killing so many beloved members of our communities, and we have to do everything to stop it.

Republicans often assert, without any evidence, that asylum seekers are the ones that are bringing fentanyl onto our shores, even though the data suggests otherwise. Once again, I am going to repeat this: The vast majority of fentanyl that is seized coming into this country is seized at ports of entry, smuggled in by United States citizens.

Playing politics about such a deadly substance is extraordinarily irresponsible. Fortunately, the amendment itself is straightforward, and it aims to get more data about combating fentanyl so we can be better informed about how it is impacting our communities.

The underlying legislation, on the other hand, and some of the talking

points that are used by my colleagues across the aisle is not that. The underlying legislation is poorly written, and it is misleading. The talking points are misleading, but the amendment is clear, and so because of that, I see no reason to oppose it.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, here I was coming to the floor thinking that I could support an amendment that made sense to me about fighting the scourge of fentanyl, and I do support the amendment because I think data will be good for us.

I just would say to my friend across the aisle: Shutting down the border is not going to fix this problem. By saying that and by continuing to use those divisive talking points, he is moving us away from a solution to the really dire issue of fentanyl that is killing our communities.

Let's work together in a bipartisan way to actually deal with the scourge of fentanyl. Let's not put it on the border and let's not pretend that shutting down the border is going to help because, as I said, fentanyl poisoning rose under the Trump administration, and Donald Trump did try to shut down the border until the courts prevented him from doing that.

The reality here is, we have a real problem. We have a real problem. I was willing to come to the floor and support this amendment because I think the data is important, and I hope my colleague across the aisle will recognize that sticking to the facts, as he did in his amendment, is the most important thing to actually addressing the issue of fentanyl.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this overly broad and unnecessary legislation. Supposedly, this bill would subject any undocumented immigrant to mandatory immigration detention if they commit an assault on a law enforcement officer.

To be clear, that is already current law.

However, this bill goes far beyond that. It would subject even those individuals with lawful status, like DACA and temporary protected status, to mandatory detention if they are merely arrested or charged with assault on a law enforcement officer.

There are no provisions to protect those who are mistakenly arrested and are released without charges. In addition, the definition of ``assault'' varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Nevertheless, this bill adopts the definition of ``assault'' used in the local jurisdiction to subject somebody to mandatory detention.

That means that conduct that people would not normally think of as an assault, like literally touching an officer, could result in an arrest and mandatory detention. Furthermore, people are mistakenly arrested for assault on a police officer far more often than we would like to admit.

When this bill was introduced, it was clearly in response to an incident earlier this year in which some recently arrived migrants allegedly assaulted a group of law enforcement officers in Times Square.

That incident sparked outrage across the country, but our Republican colleagues directed much of their ire at one particular individual who flipped off TV cameras as he left his arraignment. The image was plastered all over FOX News and was promoted by former President Trump as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Biden administration's approach to immigration.

There was only one problem, Mr. Chairman. As it turned out, that specific individual, who everyone was so quick to demonize and attack, had the charges dropped against him. Despite being arrested and initially charged, he was not even present when this crime occurred.

We also see this in protests, where one person gets unruly and the police arrest everyone in the crowd.

Let's be clear: Violence is never the answer and should never be used in a political protest. It was wrong for people to assault the police right here in the United States Capitol on January 6, just as it is wrong for people to assault the police or anyone else during any protest, regardless of their politics.

That is why U.S. law already makes assault a crime. Admitting to or being convicted of a serious assault on a law enforcement officer already results in immigration consequences under current law, including mandatory detention and deportation.

This bill doesn't change that, doesn't make anybody safer, and doesn't fix any problems in the immigration system. Instead, this legislation deems everyone guilty until proven innocent.

It serves only to further the Republican agenda to fearmonger about immigrants and keep immigration in the news during an election year while, at the same time, bankrolling the private, for-profit prison companies.

This bill is going nowhere fast, just like the very similar bill that House Republicans passed last Police Week.

The American people aren't stupid. They see what House Republicans are doing. They want meaningful reforms to the system, and they know that bills like this would do absolutely nothing toward that end.

House Republicans refuse to negotiate on immigration, and the majority fails to do anything that would actually solve some of these problems we face, only to turn around and complain when those problems get worse.

This is political theater at its worst, and I urge all of my colleagues to join with me to oppose this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Chairman, assaulting a law enforcement officer is a serious offense that deserves both criminal and immigration consequences. That is why serious assaults on law enforcement officers are already immigration violations that require detention and deportation.

The bill before us today would do absolutely nothing to change that. This legislation instead would dramatically expand the type of conduct that would subject somebody to mandatory detention, to include people who may not have even committed a crime at all.

That is not a good use of our limited law enforcement resources. Instead of wasting our time on these bills that do nothing to fix our immigration system and stand no chance of becoming law, we should be talking about how to create a workable immigration system that allows Americans to reunite with their families and allows American businesses and universities to attract the best and the brightest, essentially creating a workable process so that people wouldn't be forced to go to the border as the only way to come to the United States.

We should be talking about the fact that immigrants are good for the country and good for our economy. One in four American doctors were born abroad, and roughly 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Seventy percent of agricultural workers are immigrants.

Immigrants feed us, heal us, and help ensure that this country remains an economic powerhouse. We could be embracing the positive impacts of immigrants rather than demonizing them.

The Congressional Budget Office recently announced that new immigrants will add $1 trillion in previously unexpected revenue to our country's GDP between 2023 and 2024. Similarly, the Department of Health and Human Services found that, over a 15-year period, asylees and refugees contributed nearly $124 billion more in revenue than they received in services from the government. Documented and undocumented immigrants paid tens of billions of dollars in taxes each year.

The majority insists on scapegoating and fearmongering immigrants. It is true that the immigration system has deep problems, but they cannot be solved through an enforcement-only approach. We have been trying that approach for 30 years, and it has failed.

The truth is that the immigration system is all connected. People are coming to the border because the legal immigration system has not been updated in over 30 years, and they cannot find any other pathway to come in.

The majority often talks about legal immigrants. Let me say that the wait time for some permanent residents to bring their families into this country is over a century-long--a century for legal permanent residents to bring their family members into the country.

Employers are begging us to modernize the employment-based immigration system because the limits on high-tech visas were set when floppy disks were the height of technology. These companies cannot hire the people who they need.

Additionally, the small number of immigration judges that we have are absolutely crushed under a massive backlog of asylum cases so extensive that it is now taking people over 8 years to even get a hearing.

Why doesn't the majority just help us put more money into immigration judges so we can resolve that backlog? Why not open legal pathways for people who are trying to come here legally?

I know this, Mr. Chairman, because I came here, and it took me 17 years to navigate the immigration system and become a U.S. citizen, but that was several decades ago. Now, you can't even get through the process.

I hope that one day we can get back to actually governing, to passing real bills that can make a difference in the lives of the American people. I fear, Mr. Chairman, that today is not that day.

Mr. Chairman, I urge Members to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.

Mr. Chair, this amendment requires the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study and report to Congress on the number of undocumented immigrants detained for committing an assault against a law enforcement officer over the past 5 years.

It is important for us to take a step back and remind ourselves what the underlying legislation is about. This bill would subject even those individuals with a lawful status like DACA or temporary protected status to mandatory detention if they are merely arrested or charged with an assault on a law enforcement officer. There are no

provisions to protect those who are mistakenly arrested and are released without charges. This is an unnecessary expansion of the law, which already subjects people to mandatory detention and deportation if they admit to or are convicted of such assault.

In fact, I imagine that this report would demonstrate that the underlying legislation is wholly unnecessary because it would show that under current law people who commit assaults on law enforcement are already subject to detention. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, this legislation has absolutely nothing to do with the border. It doesn't do anything to secure our border. It doesn't do anything to fix the broken immigration system. I don't oppose this amendment because I actually think it is going to make my point at the end of the day with the report. I don't oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chair, this amendment would expand the scope of this already bad bill to include campus police and school resource officers under the term ``law enforcement officers.''

Unfortunately, this amendment makes a bad bill even worse while highlighting one of the many flaws in the bill.

First, the fact that Mr. Norman felt the need to file this amendment to begin with just highlights the lack of clarity around this bill. As we have discussed, this bill will subject any inadmissible immigrant to mandatory immigration detention for merely being arrested or charged with assault on a law enforcement officer or first responder, but the bill lacks any definition for what is considered a first responder. Mr. Norman was clearly concerned with this as well and felt the need to make sure that campus police and school resource officers were included.

Unfortunately, Mr. Norman's amendment does not bring any additional clarity to the definition of first responder, and it even adds another undefined term, ``school resource officer.''

Now, Mr. Norman could easily have remedied this by choosing the definition that exists in title 34 of the U.S. Code, but for some reason he did not. States all over the country use different definitions for school resource officers. They have different duties and functions depending on the State, so this amendment raises far more questions than it begins to answer.

On top of the poor drafting, this amendment expands an already bad bill and makes the bill worse. As I discussed during general debate, it is quite common during protests for law enforcement to arrest an entire group of people after one person in the crowd gets unruly.

After the largely peaceful protests that we have seen on college campuses over the last month, protests made up largely of young people and teenagers, it would be a mistake to extend this definition to include campus police.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, none of us are condoning violence on campuses. All I said is that the vast majority of protesters on campuses have been peaceful. What happens when one person does something and the entire group is arrested is relevant for this amendment. I don't think anybody believes that that should be the case.

I am not really sure why the gentleman felt the need to clarify exactly what the definition was in this underlying legislation except that it wasn't clear, which is the point that I have been making all along. The problem is that the amendment actually makes other terms unclear, as well.

Mr. Chairman, as I said, I oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to it.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment requires that the Department of Homeland Security provide an annual report to the Judiciary Committee of the House and the Senate containing the number of immigrants the Department detained as a result of this bill in that year.

Under this bill, that report would include people being detained even if a person is merely arrested and never charged or after the charges against them were dropped. It is important to remember that this bill does not include any waivers or provisions to exempt people who were mistakenly arrested or found not guilty.

I really hope that this report, if requested, will contain a breakdown of the number of people detained by category so that we could see how many innocent people were subject to mandatory detention under this bill. Right now, the amendment doesn't get into that level of detail, but I hope my colleagues across the aisle will work with me to make sure that we get all of the data that is provided, including that breakdown.

Nevertheless, while this amendment does nothing to improve the underlying legislation, it doesn't do anything to make it worse, and so I therefore see no reason to oppose it.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am not opposed to the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the aisle just mischaracterized the Democratic amendment that was offered during committee, and I think if he went back and looked at the record, he would see that.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation purports to improve law enforcement officer safety and wellness. It seeks to do this by requiring the Attorney General and other Federal officials to issue reports about attacks on officers, aggression against officers, and officer mental health.

While this legislation may seem on the surface to be meaningful, let us be really clear: It is just more cheap talk from Republicans.

Absolutely nothing in this bill makes a single police officer safer or invests a single dollar in officer wellness.

While the collection of accurate data, including data on officer attacks and mental health is important, this bill is unlikely to provide any new or meaningful data.

By necessity, data about incidents of violence against law enforcement officers must already be initially collected and reported, if at all, by Tribal, State, and local authorities who are in the best position to know about these incidents, not the Attorney General.

The Federal Government collects this data through participation by

these authorities in voluntary data reporting programs like the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted data collection.

Nothing in this bill provides any resources for more agencies to participate in these data collection programs, nor does it mandate any kind of reporting.

Given that there is nothing in this bill to improve the underlying data that is available to the Attorney General and others, it is unlikely that the reporting required by the bill would be able to deliver any new insights that might actually improve officer safety.

Democrats sought to solve this basic problem of inadequate data collection through the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

Under that bill, States would be required to report shootings, deaths, and other uses of force involving law enforcement officers, and States would receive grants to facilitate that reporting.

By both mandating and supporting data collection and reporting, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would significantly improve the data available to the Congress, Federal agencies, and the public.

Critically, unlike this legislation, that bill would require reporting of uses of force both by and against law enforcement, enabling us to have a full understanding of the dangers faced by officers, as well as the injuries and deaths of civilians that are caused by police.

In focusing only on attacks against officers, this bill turns a blind eye to uses of force by law enforcement against civilians, whether it is justified or not.

The mental health reporting provisions of the bill are also unlikely to improve officer wellness because they fail to build on the work of past Congresses and the Biden administration.

In the 115th Congress, we passed the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act, a bipartisan bill signed into law by President Obama, which directed the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services to report on mental health practices and services that could be adopted by law enforcement and the programs already available to them.

It also expanded the availability of grant funds for law enforcement mental health and developed new educational resources.

Building on this work, President Biden issued a 2022 executive order on advancing effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices to enhance public trust and public safety.

The executive order required the Attorney General to develop and publish a report on best practices to address law enforcement officer wellness and to make recommendations regarding the prevention of death by suicide of law enforcement officers.

The Attorney General has already complied with this executive order, so we already know much more about the mental health resources and the needs of law enforcement.

Rather than retread our steps, we should be moving forward to help our law enforcement officers implement this important work so that more officers can access the support that they need.

Last Congress, under Democratic control, the House passed numerous bipartisan bills that improved law enforcement officer safety and wellness like Protecting America's First Responders Act, the Public Safety Officer Support Act, the Confidentiality Opportunities for Peer Support, or COPS Counseling Act, and the Law Enforcement De-Escalation Training Act.

At least seven bipartisan law enforcement bills, many led by Republicans, have been passed by the Democrat-led Senate.

These are bills that would help law enforcement and are priorities for the police groups, but, so far, House Republicans have only advanced one of them.

This legislation represents another wasted opportunity to work together on substantive proposals that will make our communities and the law enforcement officers that protect them safer.

I urge Members to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Christina Scheppelmann, who is stepping down after five years of service as the General Director of Seattle Opera.

Seattle Opera thrived under Christina's leadership. Her passion for the performing arts will undoubtedly leave a mark on the City of Seattle for years to come. In the process of navigating a global pandemic that halted over two years of in-house performances, Christina led Seattle Opera to be able to deliver the entirety of its programming during the 2020-2021 season by recording performances for patrons to stream online. She helped hire artists to present free, online performances and expand virtual educational programming for youth and Veterans. When pandemic restrictions began to partially lift in 2021, Christina committed to offering Seattle Opera's first celebratory outdoor rendition of ``Die Walkure'' by Richard Wagner.

Throughout her tenure, Christina forged a deep commitment to community engagement as well as diversity, equity and inclusion. Under her leadership, the Seattle Opera presented a number of works by and about people of color. The productions included ``Blue'', a story about a Black family that draws strength from their community in the face of a police killing and ``Bound'', a story about a daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, as well as A Thousand Splendid Suns and X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. In all of these productions, she engaged the community through Advisory Boards, outreach to the specific communities represented in the productions, and nonprofit organizations working on the issues. Her goal, in her words to me, was that these productions ``showcase how Seattle Opera is keeping relevant stories centered on- stage.''

In 2020, she led Seattle Opera to launch its Racial Equity and Social Impact plan. The effort contributed toward hiring a diverse staff and brought over 100 new artists from around the world to debut performances. Her addition of community programs such as the Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab and the Seattle Arts Fellowship--will serve as trademark opportunities for underrepresented communities to build careers in the arts.

Christina's leadership at the Seattle Opera exemplifies the need for all of us in the United States to ensure we support the arts and the unique ability arts have to add positively to our society. As Christina moves on from her role at the end of the 2023-24 season to lead La Monnaie De Munt in Brussels, I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating her many accomplishments and contributions to Seattle Opera. On behalf of Washington's 7th Congressional District, I thank Christina for her service to the people of the Pacific Northwest and dedication to the performing arts.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this absurd and pointless resolution.

I will say that I actually agree with the previous speaker across the aisle, my friend across the aisle, when he said that this body wants to do absolutely nothing that actually solves the situation at the border. I agree with my friend across the aisle that this body, controlled by the Republican majority, has no interest in doing a single thing.

That is why, Mr. Speaker, we keep voting on resolutions that do nothing. They are pointless, they are absurd, and they are a tired recycling of the same talking points that we hear every day from the majority.

Frankly, the majority is not trying to hide it. Whole sections of today's resolution, including its title and 12 of the 32 whereas clauses are copied and pasted from the other grievance-airing resolution that we considered in March, so these aren't even new.

These are the same things that we are voting on over and over again because there aren't actual solutions that Republicans are willing to move forward on that would fix the immigration system.

Likewise, 2 weeks ago, we voted on a pointless rehashing of H.R. 2, the Republicans' extreme, cruel, and unworkable immigration bill that is going nowhere fast.

What are we doing here, Mr. Speaker? Why does the majority insist on wasting our time with these bills filled with nothing but empty rhetoric designed to try and weaponize the issue of immigration instead of solving it?

What we should be doing is talking about how to create a bipartisan, workable immigration system that allows Americans to reunite with their families, allows American businesses and universities to attract the best and the brightest, and create a workable process so that people wouldn't be forced to go to the border as the only way here. We should be talking about the fact that immigrants are good for our country and good for our economy. That is what the majority of Americans believe, despite all of the rhetoric from the other side.

One in four American doctors were born abroad, and roughly 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Seventy percent of agricultural workers are immigrants. Immigrants feed us, they heal us, and they help ensure that the country remains an economic powerhouse.

We could be here on the floor embracing the positive impacts of immigrants rather than demonizing them, finding ways to allow people to work more quickly to fill the shortages that we have in our labor sector.

The Congressional Budget Office recently announced that new immigrants will add $1 trillion in previously unexpected revenue to our country's GDP between 2023 and 2034. Similarly, the Department of Health and Human Services found that over a 15-year period, asylees and refugees alone contributed nearly $124 billion more in revenue than they received in services from the government. Documented and undocumented immigrants pay tens of billions of dollars in taxes every single year.

Instead, what are we doing here on the floor? The same tired rhetoric that we hear every single week. The majority insists on demonizing immigrants and the border.

It is true that we desperately need to fix a broken immigration system that hasn't been updated in over 30 years, but we cannot do that, we cannot solve that problem just through harsh enforcement measures alone. We have been trying that approach for 30 years under different Presidents, and every time it fails.

The truth is that the immigration system is all connected. People are coming to the border because the legal immigration system has not been updated in three decades, and they cannot find another pathway to come under.

The wait time for some legal permanent residents to bring their families into this country is over a century long, a century to bring your own family to this country. Employers are begging us to modernize the employment-based immigration system, because the limits on high- tech visas were set when floppy disks were the height of technology, and people cannot hire the people they need. The small number of immigration judges that we have are absolutely crushed under a massive backlog of asylum cases so extensive that it is now taking people over 8 years to get a hearing.

Under these circumstances, it should not surprise anyone that some desperate people see coming to the border

as their only option, especially when they are fleeing for their lives from countries that cannot or will not protect them. If they are willing to face the dangers of the journey and deal with unscrupulous actors like cartels to get to safety here, even the most draconian of policies will not deter them.

That is why, despite what you hear from the other side, even when former President Trump implemented the policies that this resolution holds up as the cure to all of our problems, encounters at the border actually went up, not down. They didn't work.

Instead of talking about these failed policies, we could be discussing the countless, real, bipartisan solutions that passed when Democrats held the House majority, solutions like the Dream and Promise Act, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, bills that would fix real gaps in the immigration system, provide lawful status to people who have been contributing to our communities across the country for decades, and actually make improvements that would relieve pressure on the border. We could be trying to pass the kinds of investments that would actually increase the number of immigration judges and asylum officers that would help speed up the process and make it work effectively.

Will any of those things make it to the floor in this Congress under a Republican majority whose only goal is to keep this issue out there as an election issue, just as former President Trump told them to do? No, we are just going to spend our time debating pointless resolutions that do not a single thing to fix the real situation of a broken immigration system.

We are going to keep debating nonbinding resolutions filled to the brim with mistruths and disinformation.

Mr. Speaker, I hope we can one day get back to actually governing in this House, but I fear that today is not that day.