Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the legislation. I am disappointed that today we once again are discussing the continued Republican insistence that immigration is a Federal land…
Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the legislation. I am disappointed that today we once again are discussing the continued Republican insistence that immigration is a Federal land emergency.
I will continue to dispute this claim because instead of focusing on the root causes of our Nation's immigration crisis and challenges, my colleagues have chosen to double down on a distraction.
I oppose this bill because it is a political stunt that will invite even more hateful anti-immigration rhetoric from the extreme MAGA wing of the Republican Party.
The case of Floyd Bennett Field does not represent a threat to our public lands. Rather, it encapsulates the humanitarian crisis that we are facing caused by failed immigration policies from the past administration and from the failure of Congress to take any action to reform a broken immigration system.
The crisis can be solved but only with real comprehensive immigration reform.
Madam Chair, former President Trump, as I understand it, is still the frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nomination.
News flash: Nothing has changed. He has stated that he intends to return to the White House with his supercharged plan that one of his closest confidants and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller described as a ``blitz.''
Miller went on to say that, ``Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of Federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.''
Madam Chair, I include in the Record The New York Times article, ``Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump's 2025 Immigration Plans.''
[From the New York Times, Nov. 11, 2023]
Sweeping Raids and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump's 2025 Immigration
Plans
(By Charles Savage, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan)
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme
expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he
returns to power in 2025--including preparing to round up
undocumented people already in the United States on a vast
scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to
be expelled.
The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal
immigration in a multitude of ways.
Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies,
including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-
majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of
refusing asylum claims--though this time he would base that
refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious
diseases like tuberculosis.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants
and deport people by the millions per year.
To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an
enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require
due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs
Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign
other federal agents and deputize local police officers and
National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by
Republican-run states.
To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump
wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases
are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get
around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary
funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget,
as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall
than Congress had authorized.
In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd
in Iowa in September: ``Following the Eisenhower model, we
will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in
American history.'' The reference was to a 1954 campaign to
round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an
ethnic slur--``Operation Wetback.''
The constellation of Mr. Trump's 2025 plans amounts to an
assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American
history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred
from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades
after settling here.
Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical,
financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously
challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth
and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.
In a second Trump presidency, the visas of foreign students
who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests
would be canceled. U.S. consular officials abroad will be
directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants
to block people the Trump administration considers to have
undesirable attitudes. People who were granted temporary
protected status because they are from certain countries
deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the
United States, would have that status revoked.
Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in
the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also
lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of
thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021
Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States.
Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped
U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.
And Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for
babies born in the United States to undocumented parents--by
proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the
government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing
citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards
and passports to them. That policy's legal legitimacy, like
nearly all of Mr. Trump's plans, would be virtually certain
to end up before the Supreme Court.
In interviews with The New York Times, several Trump
advisers gave the most expansive and detailed description of
Mr. Trump's immigration agenda in a potential second term. In
particular, Mr. Trump's campaign referred questions for this
article to Stephen Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump's first-
term immigration policies who remains close to and is
expected to serve in a senior role in a second
administration.
All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Mr. Miller
contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing
statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of
immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new
substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that
lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them,
he portrayed the Trump team's daunting array of tactics as a
``blitz'' designed to overwhelm immigrant-rights lawyers.
``Any activists who doubt President Trump's resolve in the
slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the
vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most
spectacular migration crackdown,'' Mr. Miller said, adding,
``The immigration legal activists won't know what's
happening.''
Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration and
criminal justice advocacy group that repeatedly fought the
Trump administration, said the Trump team's plans relied on
``xenophobic demagoguery'' that appeals to his hardest-core
political base.
``Americans should understand these policy proposals are an
authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart
nearly every aspect of American life--tanking the economy,
violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants
and native-born Americans alike,'' Mr. Schulte said.
Since Mr. Trump left office, the political environment on
immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more
capable now of exploiting that environment if he is re-
elected than he was when he first won election as an
outsider.
The ebbing of the Covid-19 pandemic and resumption of
travel flows have helped stir a global migrant crisis, with
millions of Venezuelans and Central Americans fleeing turmoil
and Africans arriving in Latin American countries before
continuing their journey north. Amid the record numbers of
migrants at the southern border and beyond it in cities like
New York and Chicago, voters are frustrated and even some
Democrats are calling for tougher action against immigrants
and pressuring the White House to better manage the crisis.
Mr. Trump and his advisers see the opening, and now know
better how to seize it. The aides Mr. Trump relied upon in
the chaotic early days of his first term were sometimes at
odds and lacked experience in how to manipulate the levers of
federal power. By
the end of his first term, cabinet officials and lawyers who
sought to restrain some of his actions--like his Homeland
Security secretary and chief of staff, John F. Kelly--had
been fired, and those who stuck with him had learned much.
In a second term, Mr. Trump plans to install a team that
will not restrain him.
Since much of Mr. Trump's first-term immigration crackdown
was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted
in his favor: His four years of judicial appointments left
behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are
far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges
to his first-term policies.
The fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
provides an illustration.
DACA is an Obama-era program that shields from deportation
and grants work permits to people who were brought unlawfully
to the United States as children. Mr. Trump tried to end it,
but the Supreme Court blocked him on procedural grounds in
June 2020.
Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump would try again to end DACA. And
the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court that blocked the last
attempt no longer exists: A few months after the DACA ruling,
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mr. Trump replaced her
with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Mr. Trump's rhetoric has more than kept up with his
increasingly extreme agenda on immigration.
His stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants--pushing
for a border wall and calling Mexicans rapists--fueled his
2016 takeover of the Republican Party. As president, he
privately mused about developing a militarized border like
Israel's, asked whether migrants crossing the border could be
shot in the legs and wanted a proposed border wall topped
with flesh-piercing spikes and painted black to burn
migrants' skin.
As he has campaigned for the party's third straight
presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only
grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing
website, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that foreign
leaders were deliberately emptying their ``insane asylums''
to send the patients across America's southern border as
migrants. He said migrants were ``poisoning the blood of our
country.'' And at a rally on Wednesday in Florida, he
compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal
Hannibal Lecter, saying; ``That's what's coming into our
country right now.''
Mr. Trump had similarly vowed to carry out mass
deportations when running for office in 2016, but the
government only managed several hundred thousand removals per
year under his presidency, on par with other recent
administrations. If they get another opportunity, Mr. Trump
and his team are determined to achieve annual numbers in the
millions.
Mr. Trump's immigration plan is to pick up where he left
off and then go much farther. He would not only revive some
of the policies that were criticized as draconian during his
presidency, many of which the Biden White House ended, but
also expand and toughen them.
One example centers on expanding first-term policies aimed
at keeping people out of the country. Mr. Trump plans to
suspend the nation's refugee program and once again
categorically bar visitors from troubled countries,
reinstating a version of his ban on travel from several
mostly Muslim-majority countries, which President Biden
called discriminatory and ended on his first day in office.
Mr. Trump would also use coercive diplomacy to induce other
nations to help, including by making cooperation a condition
of any other bilateral engagement, Mr. Miller said. For
example, a second Trump administration would seek to re-
establish an agreement with Mexico that asylum seekers remain
there while their claims are processed. (It is not clear that
Mexico would agree; a Mexican court has said that deal
violated human rights.)
Mr. Trump would also push to revive ``safe third country''
agreements with several nations in Central America, and try
to expand them to Africa, Asia and South America. Under such
deals, countries agree to take would-be asylum seekers from
specific other nations and let them apply for asylum there
instead.
While such arrangements have traditionally only covered
migrants who had previously passed through a third country,
federal law does not require that limit and a second Trump
administration would seek to make those deals without it, in
part as a deterrent to migrants making what the Trump team
views as illegitimate asylum claims.
At the same time, Mr. Miller said, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention would invoke the public health
emergency powers law known as Title 42 to again refuse to
hear any asylum claims by people arriving at the southern
border. The Trump administration had internally discussed
that idea early in Mr. Trump's term, but some cabinet
secretaries pushed back, arguing that there was no public
health emergency that would legally justify it. The
administration ultimately implemented it during the
coronavirus pandemic.
Saying the idea has since gained acceptance in practice--
Mr. Biden initially kept the policy--Mr. Miller said Mr.
Trump would invoke Title 42, citing ``severe strains of the
flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like
R.S.V. and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration
being a public health threat and conveying a variety of
communicable diseases.''
Mr. Trump and his aides have not yet said whether they
would re-enact one of the most contentious deterrents to
unauthorized immigration that he pursued as president:
separating children from their parents, which led to trauma
among migrants and difficulties in reuniting families. When
pressed, Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out
reviving the policy. After an outcry over the practice, Mr.
Trump ended it in 2018 and a judge later blocked the
government from putting it back into effect.
Soon after Mr. Trump announced his 2024 campaign for
president last November, he met with Tom Homan, who ran ICE
for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and
was an early proponent of separating families to deter
migrants.
In an interview, Mr. Homan recalled that in that meeting,
he ``agreed to come back'' in a second term and would ``help
to organize and run the largest deportation operation this
country's ever seen.''
Trump advisers' vision of abrupt mass deportations would be
a recipe for social and economic turmoil, disrupting the
housing market and major industries including agriculture and
the service sector.
Mr Miller cast such disruption in a favorable light.
``Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption
celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered
higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,'' he
said. ``Americans will also celebrate the fact that our
nation's laws are now being applied equally, and that one
select group is no longer magically exempt.''
One planned step to overcome the legal and logistical
hurdles would be to significantly expand a form of fast-track
deportations known as ``expedited removal.'' it denies
undocumented immigrants the usual hearings and opportunity to
file appeals, which can take months or years--especially when
people are not in custody--and has led to a large backlog. A
1996 law says people can be subject to expedited removal for
up to two years after arriving, but to date the executive
branch has used it more cautiously, swiftly expelling people
picked up near the border soon after crossing.
The Trump administration tried to expand the use of
expedited removal, but a court blocked it and then the Biden
team canceled the expansion. It remains unclear whether the
Supreme Court will rule that it is constitutional to use the
law against people who have been living for a significant
period in the United States and express fear of persecution
if sent home.
Mr. Trump has also said he would invoke an archaic law, the
Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug
cartels and criminal gangs without due process. That law
allows for summary deportation of people from countries with
which the United States is at war, that have invaded the
United States or that have engaged in ``predatory
incursions.''
The Supreme Court has upheld past uses of that law in
wartime. But its text seems to require a link to the actions
of a foreign government, so it is not clear whether the
justices will allow a president to stretch it to encompass
drug cartel activity.
More broadly, Mr. Miller said a new Trump administration
would shift from the ICE practice of arresting specific
people to carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in
public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized
immigrants at once.
To make the process of finding and deporting undocumented
immigrants already living inside the country ``radically more
quick and efficient,'' he said, the Trump team would bring in
``the right kinds of attorneys and the right kinds of policy
thinkers'' willing to carry out such ideas.
And because of the magnitude of arrests and deportations
being contemplated, they plan to build ``vast holding
facilities that would function as staging centers'' for
immigrants as their cases progress and they wait to be flown
to other countries.
Mr. Miller said the new camps would likely be built ``on
open land in Texas near the border.''
He said the military would construct them under the
authority and control of the Department of Homeland Security.
While he cautioned that there were no specific blueprints
yet, he said the camps would look professional and similar to
other facilities for migrants that have been built near the
border.
Such camps could also enable the government to speed up the
pace and volume of deportations of undocumented people who
have lived in the United States for years and so are not
subject to fast-track removal. If pursuing a longshot effort
to win permission to remain in the country would mean staying
locked up in the interim, some may give up and voluntarily
accept removal without going through the full process.
The use of these camps, Mr. Miller said, would likely be
focused more on single adults because the government cannot
indefinitely hold children under a longstanding court order
known as the Flores settlement. So any families brought to
the facilities would have to be moved in and out more
quickly, he said.
The Trump administration tried to overturn the Flores
settlement, but the Supreme Court did not resolve the matter
before Mr. Trump's term ended. Mr. Miller said the Trump team
would try again.
To increase the number of agents available for ICE sweeps,
Mr. Miller said, officials from other federal law enforcement
agencies would be temporarily reassigned, and state National
Guard troops and local police officers, at least from willing
Republican-led states, would be deputized for immigration
control efforts.
While a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act generally
forbids the use of the armed forces for law enforcement
purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an
exception. Mr. Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act at the
border, enabling the use of federal troops to apprehend
migrants, Mr Miller said.
``Bottom line,'' he said, ``President Trump will do
whatever it takes.''
Madam Chair, apparently, the plan that has Mr. Miller salivating includes mass roundups, mass incarceration, permanently ending DACA, and the construction of camps to hold migrants waiting to be processed and presumably later expelled from the country.
This is the leader from the Republican Party--his platform on immigration.
I wonder if MAGA Don thinks that he will build these camps on public lands. I hope not, but who knows, perhaps he even thinks Mexico will pay for it.
Seeking asylum is a human right. We should be discussing how we can best support migrants in this time of crisis by providing additional resources to guarantee safety and well-being during the immigration process.
We should be supporting cities like New York that are responding proactively to this crisis. Instead, we are taking up a bill that micromanages and limits local decisionmaking authority.
If the Republicans wanted to protect our parks, they would have passed an appropriations bill that would not cut nearly half a billion dollars from the National Park budget. Such a cut would result in the loss of 1,000 park staff and will reduce the agency's maintenance and preservation funding.
These extreme cuts are going nowhere in the Senate, and President Biden has promised to veto, so why waste that time.
To protect our parks, we should empower our Federal land management agencies by providing them with the necessary resources to fulfill their mission and the mission to the American people. Instead, this bill would interfere with that work.
Historically, the National Park Service has the authority to lease its property if the agency head determines that the lease will not obstruct the preservation of the property. Well, in the case of Floyd Bennett Field, the temporary lease will have minimal environmental impact.
New York City will be investing millions of dollars to address the deferred maintenance and improve visitor amenities, leaving the site actually better than before. This idea that leasing the field this way will somehow degrade it is a red herring.
The temporary lease will also have minimal impact on recreation. The park at Floyd Bennett Field we are talking about in this instance is the disused runway at an abandoned airport. That is why the site has a long history of leasing for nonrecreational purposes.
It has been used for emergency responses, like during Hurricane Sandy, and even now it is used by NYPD and the New York City Department of Sanitation for exercises, including training their drivers in the use of heavy-duty vehicles.
Madam Chair, New York City is urgently responding to a humanitarian crisis. We need to support that effort. Evicting the migrants at Floyd Bennett Field with no plan for keeping them from being homeless is not a real solution for New Yorkers. It is not a real solution for our national immigration debate. We need real immigration reform, not more unserious attempts to distract from the root of the problem.
Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), a distinguished member of the Natural Resources Committee.
Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maine (Ms. Pingree).
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I think a soft reminder is important now, as we point to these asylum seekers and those who are seeking refugee status in this country and those who are going through the immigration process.
It is important to note that they are not the first. Almost everybody who speaks on this floor today can trace their lineage to somebody who wasn't here in this country when the indigenous people, the first Americans in this country, were here.
I think we need to be careful not to stereotype, not to be ugly, and not to be abusive about a crisis and human tragedy that we see before us that we should be attending to rather than exploiting.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), a valued colleague.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia).
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Goldman).
Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia).
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mr. Chairman, as a reminder, seeking asylum is a human, legal right protected by international law and United States law, period.
Instead of wishing that that was not the case, Republicans should work with Democrats and the administration to move a meaningful response to this humanitarian crisis and dealing with the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. Unfortunately, we are here debating a senseless stunt of a bill instead.
Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Chicago, Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).
Mr. Chairman, yes, elections do have consequences, and one of the responsibilities that elections provide to the United States Congress and the House of Representatives, let me remind my colleagues, is our broken immigration system, and that is a problem only Congress can solve.
We have seen what happens when Republicans try to solve this from the White House. The Trump administration set an unprecedented pace for executive action on immigration. These restrictive policies did not solve the crisis. Instead, they increased the backlog in immigration proceedings, separated children from their families, banned foreign nationals from predominately Muslim countries, and cut refugee numbers to the lowest in decades, among other things. So this is on Congress to fix.
Unfortunately, as long as Republicans refuse to support real, substantive reform that is fair, humane, and equitable for all parties, then we will continue to see immigration-related crises of the makings of Congress and in this particular instance of the making of the House majority Republicans.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, it is interesting to hear my Republican counterparts wax eloquently about their concerns for our national parks during this debate. They didn't say a word about the tremendous damage done to cultural resources by Trump's disastrous border wall along the southern border in Arizona primarily. They did not speak to that issue at all.
In fact, now they want to condition aid to Ukraine and possibly Israel, who are key U.S. allies, on the construction of even more miles of an ineffective and destructive border wall.
It is one thing to have a debate about a basic philosophical difference and policy difference that we have in terms of immigration reform. It is another to use half-truths and disinformation and to be disingenuous in presenting what is a reality. The reality on the southern border in Arizona is serious, and I have not denied and will not deny that it is a crisis.
Nevertheless, this is a crisis that must be worked on humanely and not by stereotyping and profiling people because of their country of origin as the reason that we make the harsh comments that are being heard today.
Pandering is not the solution. Constructive and pragmatic immigration reform is what we need to do. That is not being done, and this bill doesn't do it.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
We have heard the argument today, and indeed for years now, that migrants crossing our border are the primary ones responsible for the tens of thousands of American lives tragically lost to fentanyl overdoses each year. It is a tragedy that we can all not only sympathize with but want to do something desperately about.
Nevertheless, that story is simply false. Fentanyl is overwhelmingly smuggled into the United States by American citizens where it is then also consumed by American citizens. That is a fact.
In 2021 more than 86 percent of convicted fentanyl traffickers were U.S. citizens. More than 90 percent of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points and interior checkpoints, not illegal immigration routes, and just 0.02 percent of migrants arrested by Border Patrol are found to possess fentanyl.
Mr. Chair, I include in the Record a piece from The American Prospect exploring how customs loopholes allow smugglers to ship fentanyl and its precursor chemical to the United States without inspection or law enforcement.
[The American Prospect, Nov. 27, 2023]
The Amazon Loophole Is Driving the Fentanyl Crisis
(By David Dayen)
One of the more frustrating things about public policy in
the United States is how the dominance of corporate interests
makes simple reforms that could save thousands of lives
impossible. To wit: Here is the story of how Amazon and other
retailers are facilitating the epidemic of deaths from
fentanyl.
We know that fentanyl deaths rose 279 percent from 2016 to
2022. Two-thirds of the 110,000-plus overdose deaths in
America last year were due to fentanyl. It is the leading
killer of Americans aged 18 to 49, and it has devastated
communities across the country.
Drug enforcement efforts in the U.S. have historically
targeted supply through a so-called ``war on drugs.'' But
reducing the amount of fentanyl on the street need not
involve military-style operations in Central and South
America. China is the source of most of the chemical
compounds that cartels use to make fentanyl in illicit drug
labs. Without these raw materials, much of the fentanyl trade
would be stopped.
Now, of course this would not halt opioid addiction or use
by itself; traditional smuggled heroin would likely fill in
the gap. But fentanyl is orders of magnitude more dangerous
than heroin thanks to its extreme potency, which is a
principal cause of the overdose epidemic. The tiniest of
measurement errors can lead to an overdose, and black-market
drug dealers are not exactly known for their responsible
metrology.
Customs enforcement officials have begun to charge Chinese
firms that produce and ship these precursor chemicals (and
produced fentanyl as well, and President Biden, in a summit
earlier this month, pressured Chinese President Xi Jinping on
the matter. The U.S. and China agreed in principle to a deal
where China would limit the flow of fentanyl
in exchange for the U.S. rolling back restrictions on China's
forensic police institute.
But while Chinese cooperation is welcome, the bigger
problem is that the vast majority of fentanyl chemicals sent
from China are not inspected at all. That's because of
something called the ``de minimis'' rule.
Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930 allows for goods
under a certain value to be shipped into the U.S. without
tariffs, fees, or inspections. Anyone who has flown on
international travel is familiar with this from their
declaration card when they return to the U.S.; if you got
some trinkets from abroad that are of a nominal value, you
don't have to submit them to customs officials.
In 2016, that nominal, or de minimis, value, went up from
$200 to $800. There are only two countries in the world that
have a higher de minimis value than the U.S.; China's de
minimis value is less than $10.
Why did this change happen? Because
e-commerce firms, primarily Amazon, wanted to be able to
bring in goods from China to their warehouses or even
directly to their customers without any taxes or tariffs. In
fact, it's often been characterized as the ``Amazon
loophole.''
Chinese shippers have been known to package shipments in
separate boxes to keep under the $800 threshold, or send
goods to distribution centers just outside the United States,
where packages are broken up to get under the de minimis
threshold and sent into the country.
These small shipments have exploded in frequency. In fiscal
year 2018, 410.5 million de minimis packages were sent. By
fiscal year 2022, that number was up to 685.1 million. Some
experts put that number much higher. One analysis estimates
that the official figure for the trade deficit with China
last year was short by $188 billion after accounting for de
minimis shipments.
While there's practically no information available about
these shipments (many have no data at all except for a
mailing label), there is mounting evidence that one of the
most common de minimis items is fentanyl, as Michael Stumo of
the Coalition for a Prosperous America has written. This
stands to reason, as fentanyl's potency means it is highly
valuable by weight. ``The overwhelming volume of small
packages and lack of actionable data,'' the U.S. Office of
Customs and Border Protection wrote earlier this year,
``impacts CBP's ability to identify and interdict high-risk
shipments that may contain narcotics, merchandise that poses
a risk to public safety, counterfeits, or other contraband.''
It's highly likely that precursor chemicals are moving from
China to Mexico under de minimis rules as well.
It was not the original intention of de minimis rules to
build a parallel, off-the-books customs system, used often
for illegal goods shipping. But that's what the Amazon
loophole has facilitated. Congress is aware of the problem. A
bill from Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
would reduce de minimis thresholds to the level of trading
partners (meaning that the de minimis threshold on Chinese
goods would fall to under $10). A separate bipartisan,
bicameral bill would simply ban de minimis shipments from
``non-market'' economies, as well as countries on a priority
watch list for using de minimis, which would target China.
The House Select Committee on China has investigated
rampant use of the Amazon loophole from fast-fashion
companies using forced labor. One textile industry official
described de minimis as akin to ``handing a free trade
agreement to China and the rest of the world.'' The chairman
of the China committee, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), has
expressed optimism that legislation reforming de minimis
would pass this year (though passing anything in Congress is
incredibly optimistic).
Of course, this is terrible news for the companies
exploiting the loophole for tax benefits, like Amazon and
other online retailers. So they are firing up their lobby
engines. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National
Foreign Trade Council (a trade group of importers) deny that
counterfeit goods or fentanyl enter the U.S. through de
minimis shipments at all, while arguing that CBP gets plenty
of information about what's in the packages. Lobbyists and
their allies are also complaining about higher CBP costs for
inspections of small packages, while not mentioning that it
would be the importer who would have to pay those charges.
Keep in mind that when indictments were handed down on the
companies sending precursor chemicals for fentanyl to drug
cartels, they were reportedly packagd to appear as dog food,
nuts, or motor oil. The ``benefits of free trade'' are hard
to discern in a recently expanded loophole intended mostly to
save Amazon money that is now facilitating the fentanyl
crisis.
There's another beneficiary of the de minimis loophole:
digital advertising companies, which benefit from ads from
Chinese fast-fashion firms like Shein and Temu that make
liberal use of the loophole. Financial Times reporter Rana
Foroohar reported recently that one-third of the revenue
growth from Meta this year is due to these two fast-fashion
firms.
The Biden administration could actually use executive
authority to remove certain de minimis exceptions. But in a
meeting last week about combating the entry of fentanyl,
administration officials actually claimed that reauthorizing
the warrantless spying provisions of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act was critical to stopping the supply. There
isn't much evidence that surveillance dragnets would deal
with the fentanyl trade, and Congress is highly unlikely to
rubber-stamp government spying once again.
Drug addiction is largely a medical issue, and expanding
treatment is likely to pay higher dividends than a loser's
game of trying to stem the flow of supply. But the fact that
fentanyl is coming in through ordinary shipping services
without inspection seems to be the low-hanging fruit here.
The process of customs inspection has been almost totally
circumvented, to the benefit of two groups: e-commerce
companies raking in cheap goods from China, and drug
traffickers. The latter may be a universally hated scourge,
but the former is quite powerful. And so abuse of the
loophole continues.
The question for lawmakers and the White House then
becomes: How many Americans are they willing to sacrifice so
Amazon doesn't have to pay a little bit in import fees?
Mr. Chair, U.S. citizens are providing both the supply and the demand for fentanyl and other illegal drugs. The organized criminal syndicates on both sides of the borders are the ones profiting off the billions and billions of dollars from the misery and deaths that fentanyl has caused.
Instead of addressing these root causes that have led to the tragic opioid epidemic, Republicans want to lay the blame on migrants seeking a life in this great Nation of ours, being free from persecution and free from hatred and fear.
That is another piece of disinformation. I think it is important to know that we are talking about an issue where that bitter taste and that deadly taste was introduced to the American people by Big Pharma, nice homegrown American corporations that provide pharmaceuticals to this country.
They introduced the habit to the country. Organized crime has taken it over. American citizens are being hurt, and American citizens are hurting other citizens.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, in closing, we are having a debate on a piece of legislation that is not really the intent of the legislation. The intent of this legislation is to begin to continue to develop the narrative anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric that the Republican majority feels is going to be their pathway to electoral success in 2024.
I think the American people are going to be able to see that if you want to talk about our national parks and the public use as being the priority, Democrats are prepared to work with the Republican majority to protect them and to enhance those resources.
If we are going to talk about immigration and we are going to talk in an atmosphere where the dog whistles don't become barks on this issue, Democrats are prepared to do that. We are prepared to sit down and look at the aspects of legalization, security, and fighting the syndicated crime that is causing much hurt in this country and in Mexico. We are prepared to do that, but we are not prepared to deal with this issue as a ruse, as a stunt, as a political performative act leading to 2024.
If they are serious about immigration reform, if we are serious about protecting our public lands and waters, we are serious about it, too.
Mr. Chair, I urge all Members of the House to vote ``no'' on this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chair, this amendment is, frankly, completely unnecessary. It would require preparation and submission of an annual report in perpetuity regarding the migrants housed on certain public lands. Yet, the underlying bill would essentially ban any such housing.
It is a permanent requirement for reporting on nothing, paid for by the taxpayer.
Over the years, I have heard plenty of skepticism from my Republican colleagues about some of the reports that Congress requires of the executive branch. Usually, though, I can at least see the argument for those other reports, but I have to say it is interesting to see my Republican colleagues in favor of this one.
That said, I don't think this amendment is worth fighting over either. Having these reports would not be useful, but it would not be actively harmful either. I only hope that House Republicans would change their minds about slashing the budgets of these departments and will instead give Federal workers the funding they need to carry out their missions, which will now also include generating these annual reports.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, again, in our view, this amendment is unnecessary, but it is not actively harmful, either. I hope we can move on. I hope that everybody is satisfied, that they got their little clips done in terms of being strong, hard, anti-immigrant people and got those little sound bites done already. I think it is time that we move on.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this amendment. This amendment draws attention to the dubious and deceptive strategy of placing migrants on buses under false pretenses and without any coordination or even a courtesy call.
Both Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis have demonstrated that they are more interested in ginning up the MAGA base on Twitter than finding meaningful solutions to the challenges facing our immigration system, the refugee crisis both nationally and particularly in their States.
Migrants are people, not political pawns. We can have disagreements over immigration policy. That is fair game. However, the dehumanizing games and political stunts need to stop.
Mr. Chair, I associate myself with the remarks of the gentlewoman from New York, the sponsor of the amendment.