Immigration And The Rule Of Law
Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and to have the privilege to participate in this great deliberative body that we have and are. On occasion, I come…
Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and to have the privilege to participate in this great deliberative body that we have and are.
On occasion, I come down here and listen to my colleagues from the other side of the aisle. They have been known to change the subject on me, or I have changed the subject that I came down here to speak about because I have listened to the things that they had to say. It is good for us to have that kind of debate, Mr. Speaker, because certainly I disagree with the conclusions that have been drawn here.
I want to take this from the top, and I will get to the wall situation along the way. I think those numbers are a long ways off, myself. I will start the immigration issue, Mr. Speaker. There has been a long battle that has gone on. For me, it goes back into the early
part of this millennium when we had a group of Senators who decided they were going to solve the immigration problem back in about 2006 or so, and so they brought their big immigration bill and pushed it hard.
Here in the House we brought an enforcement bill and pushed that back against the Senate. We held hearings for that enforcement bill around the country, in places like Arizona and Dubuque, Iowa, as I recall. There were a number of others around the country. We made the case that we have to be a nation of laws, and the rule of law has to prevail, and that the effort on the other side was to waive the application of the law. They said: We want to be able to tell people that we feel sorry for you. Therefore, we are going to sacrifice the rule of law out of our sympathy for the condition that you left in order to come in to America.
Well, that fits some people, but it doesn't substitute for the rule of law. It doesn't substitute for the respect for the law that we must have if we are going to be a law-abiding, first world nation. Plenty of Third World nations don't have respect for the rule of law. Most of the nations that these illegal aliens come from are coming from countries that don't have respect for the rule of law. One of the things they are trying to get away from is the erosion of the law that they have had in their home country.
I mean, think of Mexico, for example. Driving down the street in Mexico, you might be pulled over by a police officer there and they will leverage a thing called mordida against you, which is you pay the police officer on the spot and he will let you go. Well, that is paying off the law enforcement. They use that to generate income for themselves, and they get by with it in a country that is corrupt.
Mr. Speaker, when I travel to Mexico and to some of the worst places in the world, and when I look at the circumstances there, whatever they may be, I can generally put together--and I will say almost always put together--a proposal, a strategy on how to put that country back in shape again and get it functioning the way it should function.
In Mexico, for example, they have a lot of natural resources. They have good, hardworking people. They have got a continuity of family. They have got a culture that goes deep back for centuries, but they can't make it work, and they haven't made it work for a long time. I don't know if they have ever made it work.
At the heart of this is the corruption that exists. The corruption is there due to lack of respect for the rule of law. If we import that contempt for the rule of law and if we adopt it as our national policy, which would be amnesty, we would be adopting the policy of accepting the violation of law and rewarding the lawbreakers for their objective that they had when they broke the law.
If we do that, America, the shining city on the hill, continues to devolve downward toward the Third World from the first world. Our job should instead be lift up the Third World to the standards that we are here in the first world. And one of those things would be to promote the rule of law in the countries where they don't have it, as in Mexico and many of the Central American countries. That is the center of this immigration debate, Mr. Speaker.
Out of all this discussion that goes on, I hear the individual narratives, I hear the heartbreaking stories, I hear all of the laments that are out there about, oh, woe are somebody's constituents because they are subject to the application of the rule of law and they want to be exempted from that. Meanwhile, as soon as they are exempted from the rule of law, if that should happen, and the destruction of the rule of law in this country, they are going to be asking for the law to protect them in some other area. That is how this is going on in this country.
I would take this back to 1986, more than 30 years ago, Mr. Speaker, when this debate was going on. It is the same debate that has been going on in this country for more than 30 years. There were approximately a million illegal aliens in the United States, as far as the estimates were concerned, at the beginning of the debate when the House and the Senate eventually passed the 1986 amnesty act; a million.
The discussion was: Well, we can't possibly address these million people that are in America and we can't possibly deport them all, so let's make an accommodation to them. Let them stay, give them a fast track--it turned out to be a path to citizenship--then what we will do is we will promise America that there will never be another amnesty again ever.
That was the language that was used. There will never be another amnesty again ever. At least at the time, they were honest enough to admit it was an amnesty.
So they set about passing the legislation in the House and the Senate that granted amnesty, they thought, to a million people. That amnesty legislation went to the Ronald Reagan's White House, where he was surrounded by a group of people in the Cabinet who were his advisers. I am sure they had the best interests of the country's and the President's in mind, but they had decided to advise Ronald Reagan that he should sign the amnesty act because he could put this issue away, well, maybe forever, but for the duration of our Republic because we were always going to enforce immigration law from that point forward.
And Ronald Reagan, I don't have inside knowledge on what he was thinking on the deliberations that went on. I just know that most of his Cabinet advised him to sign the Amnesty Act. He ultimately signed the Amnesty Act.
Consequently, when they began processing these illegal aliens, there were only going to be--I say ``only.'' They thought it was a huge number--1 million. There were going to be 1 million of them to process. Well, they processed 3 million instead of 1 million.
Why? One, they probably underestimated and undercounted. The other half of the equation was there was a lot of fraud that got in the door that was processed also.
And so we end up with about 3 million newly amnestied Americans that have a pass to citizenship who have been rewarded for violating America's immigration laws, many of them rewarded for committing the crime of unlawful entry into the United States of America and many of them operating with false documents. That was the path 30 years ago.
After that bill was signed and the results of it became evident, then President Reagan reversed his position and announced that he regretted that he had signed the Amnesty Act of 1986. I remember those days. And I have since had the conversation with then-Attorney General Ed Meese, who has informed me about the inside workings of this to a degree.
I lament that that decision was made in 1986 by President Reagan to sign the Amnesty Act because it started us on a 30-year debate. Once debate was out there and once the public understood and once people in foreign countries began to believe that if they could, once, get into the United States, there would sooner or later come along and be another Amnesty Act that would include them and they would have their path to citizenship and lawful presence in America and all of the benefits that have grown massively since 1986, once you put the carrot out, once you break the mold of the principle of protecting the rule of law, then after that it is easier the next time and the next time and the next time.
Our virtue that we had a respectable virtue on enforcing immigration law in `86 has been ratcheted downwards because of the `86 Amnesty Act and at least six much smaller but subsequent amnesty acts since that time.
I looked into the language in the early part of this millennium more than a decade ago, and they say, well, first of all, it is not amnesty, and they tried to redefine it. I have had this discussion with Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration: Well, it isn't amnesty if they pay a fine. It isn't amnesty if they get a background check. It isn't amnesty if they abide by our laws. It isn't amnesty if they learn English.
Well, I am not very thrilled about that. I would say the proposal then was a $1,500 fine in order to waive the criminal charge of unlawful entry into the United States of America. Under that argument, somehow that mitigated violating the law, so you wouldn't be able to call it amnesty. And I defined it then. I said: No, whatever the penalty is on the books when the crime is committed, if you waive
that penalty, you have provided amnesty for a class of people.
So the more precise definition of amnesty, to grant amnesty, is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their violation or their crime, as the case may be--pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crime.
What is this proposal with DACA and DAPA that President Obama so unconstitutionally advanced forward? It is just that. It is the most blatant form of amnesty for the largest classes of people that has ever been created in the history of the United States of America. Of course, we only have to look back to 1986 to find the first amnesty, and then there have been the six or so subsequent amnesties that I have mentioned.
But Barack Obama, constitutional scholar, at least as high a standing as Mr. Panetta from California who spoke here on the floor a little bit ago, but Barack Obama, constitutional scholar, 22 times on videotape, in different speeches in various places around the country, said to America that he didn't have the constitutional authority to waive the application of the immigration law against people who claim that they came to America before their 18th birthday and presumably were brought in by their parents.
If you look at the DACA language that has been advanced here in the House--or let's go across the rotunda to the Senate and look at Dick Durbin's language there. It is, if you have come into America before your 18th birthday, for any purpose whatsoever, then you get amnesty. And some of those people now, according to the older drafts of the bill, would be 38 years old, getting amnesty to stay in the United States of America at age 38.
People believe that that is the humane thing to do, to reward them with the objective of their crime. Now, they could have carried a backpack of marijuana into the United States the day before their 18th birthday--I have been telling the truth about pretty much all of that, except they are supposed to not commit any other crimes--and they would be granted this level of amnesty under DACA. The President's DACA acronym stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
So that policy that he advanced, after Barack Obama, 22 times, told us he didn't have the constitutional authority, he was right. Just a couple of weeks before he issued this DACA policy, he stood over here at a high school in Washington, D.C., and explained to them that he didn't have the authority.
He said: Congress passes the laws; I, in the executive branch, enforce the laws; and the courts interpret the laws. Pretty simple. That is a nice, concise description of the balance of powers that we have in this country. But he said he didn't have the authority because he can't write law.
Two weeks later, the President announces the policy to grant work permits and Social Security numbers to illegal aliens that are in the United States who assert that they came in before their 18th birthday. So he created an entire class of people.
I read carefully through the Morton memos. I read the memo that launched all of this. It was signed by Janet Napolitano, then-Secretary of Homeland Security. Janet Napolitano's memo said, seven times, on an individual basis only--on an individual basis only--in this page and a third of the document that established the policy.
I remember her testimony before the Judiciary Committee. She knew very well that they had to make an argument that this was on an individual basis only in order to try to sustain any kind of facade before the courts, when they would almost certainly be sued for DACA and later on for DAPA.
Well, it was never on an individual basis. There were huge classes of people that were created. They created four separate classes of people in those memos. Still they assert that they have a right to do this, and now I hear the gentleman say it is unconstitutional.
It is unbelievable to me that anybody could argue when President Obama said it was unconstitutional--he was the last one that was going to admit this--and he went ahead and committed an unconstitutional act. So that takes care of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Then Obama came with the policy DAPA, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. That is an illegal who has a baby in America. If they sneak into America and they have a baby, they call that birthright citizenship. The President grants them a legal presence because they violated our laws, and some of them, many of them, for the express purpose of coming here to have a baby that would be granted the practice of American citizenship.
We see between 340,000 and 750,000 of those babies born in America every year. Think of the population that America is carrying that doesn't have a moral claim to citizenship, doesn't actually have a legal claim to citizenship, just can point to the practice that we began awarding citizenship to babies born to illegals many years ago. There were only a few of them. It wasn't significant. By the time it gets around to where it is significant, now they have created their own constituency group here in America.
But both of those policies, DACA and DAPA, are clearly unconstitutional.
And DAPA, Texas brought that case against the United States of America and has prevailed so far in court before Judge Andrew Hanen. The DAPA policy is now at least suspended and held in place because one wise judge in Texas decided to draw the line. He had the clearest constitutional understanding DAPA is unconstitutional and the President can't write the law.
Mr. Speaker, I am not speaking from a lack of experience on this or lack of knowledge on this. I am not here speaking off of talking points that came from anyone other than a handful of notes I scribbled a few minutes ago, but here is one of my experiences on the separation of powers.
When I was in the State Senate in Iowa, our newly elected Governor at that time was Tom Vilsack, who served 8 years and did a respectable job as a Democratic Governor in those 8 years. Very early in his term, he issued an executive order also, Executive Order No. 7, that granted special protective status for sexual orientation and gender identity.
When that executive order came down, I looked at that. I was appalled that a Governor would think that he could legislate by executive order. I made my calls to my Republican attorneys and made my case. They all told me I didn't understand it, that it was drafted in such a deft way that it fit with nuances such that it was a constitutional executive order and that I had to submit to it. My answer was, no, the Iowa General Assembly has, within the boundaries of its State constitution, the same legislative authority that this Congress has and that it was clear to me that he was legislating by executive order.
I initiated legislation to push on it and I initiated a lawsuit. That lawsuit is easy to look up. It is King v. Vilsack, and it was decided exactly on the same kind of principle: whether an executive officer, a Governor, or a President can write law.
Our Founding Fathers would agree with no concept that said that either the executive branch or the judicial branch of government could write law. Instead, they separated these out and they gave us Articles I, II, and III of our Constitution.
Mr. Speaker, it is pretty clear. They didn't write it someplace later on in the Constitution. They put it right up front, Article I, section 1: ``All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States''--not a President of the United States, not a judicial branch of the United States, but a Congress of the United States--``which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.''
Then they set about laying out the structure of the Senate and the House of Representatives, all legislative powers. And then the Congress has delegated some legislative powers. There is no delegated legislative power here for the President of the United States to write immigration law, but he did that.
Then we had to bring two lawsuits. The one is Texas v. The United States, decided by Judge Hanen. That decision stands. It was appealed up to the Supreme Court, where there was a 4-4 tie, which means that the Fifth Circuit decision by Hanen prevails. Well, good. Congratulations. It is held in place now.
But DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--and that is kind of an odd acronym that doesn't necessarily match somebody that is 38 years old--I pulled the people together to initiate that lawsuit. It turned out to be Crane v. Napolitano. That case is still being litigated. It has been pushed off onto a side rail. The president of the ICE union has been directed to litigate against the Justice Department because it is a grievance with their employees rather than getting at the constitutional question. It has been pushed off on the side by a judge. So that case is still being litigated, but it remains unconstitutional.
The former President of the United States knows that. Not only that, our current President, Donald Trump, knows that. He has said many times during the campaign that very early on in his Presidency he would eliminate the unconstitutional executive orders that bring about these components of amnesty. That includes DACA and DAPA.
It needs to also include the Morton memos. I have got a nice little packet I can send to the White House. I really did expect that very early in his administration he would address DACA and DAPA and the Morton memos. So it was a bit of a surprise to me to learn as far as, I will say, as recently as January 23--and this is the only confirmation I have of this--that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is still issuing DACA permits and still extending DACA permits. That is a number that runs up to about 800 a day at the pace, at least, that they were doing, with tens of thousands in backlog yet.
The simple thing to do would be to freeze any action on DACA and DAPA. I would rescind the executive order and invalidate every DACA permit and every DAPA permit. We have got a database also to address that, Mr. Speaker. The simplest thing right now would be to just simply suspend any action that is affirmative in continuing this unconstitutional act. From my standpoint--and I think it should be the standpoint of the President of the United States and of the Vice President of the United States and all who have taken an oath--his oath is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; and the Constitution requires that he take care that the laws be faithfully executed. I think he was very sincere when he gave that oath, and I think that Vice President Pence was even more sincere when he gave his oath. It was very moving to me to witness that testimony out here on the west portico of the Capitol.
I want to remind the administration that this action continues, at least as far as the report is concerned; and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services may just need a memo from the White House to cease and desist the unconstitutional actions taking place at USCIS-- very simple, very abrupt, and not very traumatic to anybody in this country--and then start the process of undoing the lawlessness that we have had to submit to under Barack Obama's regime.
My strongest encouragement: the earlier that DACA and DAPA are addressed by this President in the keeping of his solemn oath--and that is to the American people--the easier it is going to be. I am encouraging that it happen early and that it not be delayed, because the problems created by Barack Obama are now being compounded by USCIS.
I want to also, Mr. Speaker, speak in favor of accelerating the construction of this wall. That is another solemn pledge of President Trump's. By the way, of that agenda that he laid out for America that Thursday night in Cleveland, as I listened to plank after plank after plank in his platform, it was a solid and a strong agenda. He has people in place who are listening to all of the pledges that he has made, and he has been going down through that list in an impressive fashion, keeping his oath time after time after time, keeping his promises to the American people time after time. I am looking at the exceptions, but the rule has been a very consistent and a very aggressive approach to keeping these promises.
I know that a week ago Saturday, President Trump sat down at a table with a small group of people behind him and he went through three executive orders. One of them was a reorganization of the National Security Council. The second of the three was for the Department of Defense to produce a strategy to defeat radical Islamic jihad--or at least ISIS--and to produce that strategy within 30 days. When it was over, I realized three executive orders had been signed, and I thought: How long did that take?
I backed my television up; set my stopwatch on my iPhone; and in a minute and 40 seconds, the President of the United States had signed three executive orders and moved this country dramatically in the right direction again, again, and again.
So I am not here in broad criticism. I am here with targeted encouragement. I am not concerned that the wall hasn't moved quickly enough. I am here, though, Mr. Speaker, reinforcing that promise to the American people, who, by the tens of thousands and event after event after event, chanted: ``Build the wall. Build the wall.'' We even had an individual come to an event in Iowa who had a ``wall'' costume on. It looked like he was made out of flexible cement blocks. It is a movement in this country, and it is a promise to America.
Mr. Speaker, I would point out that Donald Trump never said, ``I think we will build some fence,'' or ``we are going to do something virtual.'' He said that we are going to build a wall--it will be a big wall; it will be a beautiful wall; and the Mexicans are going to pay for it. That is the line. I have said that I think that Donald Trump has been an expert at building things big and that he has been an expert at building them beautiful. I am going to leave it up to him to figure out how to get the Mexicans to pay for it, but I am pretty confident he is going to get that done, and I am intending to be supportive of that effort.
But when I hear the gentleman from California speak about how expensive the wall is--and his numbers were $15 billion to $30 billion, I think he said, to build 1,300 miles of wall--we have got 2,000 miles of border, and we have got, oh, a few miles built that are adequate barriers right now, but much of it that we even call a fence or a wall needs to be completely reconstructed so that we have an effective barrier. Of the estimates of about $15 billion to $30 billion or the numbers that go, on the Republican side, even up to $25 billion, if anybody is telling you it is a number that is $15 billion or higher, you should understand they don't want that wall built at all. That is why they have an inflated number in their heads.
So who gives them that number?
I read those documents, and I have questioned those numbers considerably, but I don't know if there is anybody in the United States Congress who has more years and more experience in building things and in being in the construction business than I do. We are in our 42nd year of construction with King Construction, and we do a similar kind of work that gives us the ability to make a legitimate estimate on the cost of this wall.
I have designed a wall. Many people know, Mr. Speaker, that I built it down here on the floor more than 10 years ago and that I put an estimate into that, which is now on YouTube, that has gone semi-viral. That estimate that I uttered then that night holds up pretty well when I put our modern software estimating to work and--I will say this-- thanks to my oldest son, David King, who owns that company today, as he committed some days of pro bono work to put together an estimate on what it would take to build a concrete wall with at least a 5-foot-deep foundation in it and a wall that comes up to be a minimum of 12 feet functioning in height, with wire on top. An estimate of a wall of that nature is sophisticated. It is about six pages of spreadsheet--five and a half to be a little more accurate--but it is all built into the interrelational databases that are necessary to add your materials and your labor and your overhead and your costs to be able to build a wall.
Now, here is what is really going on. We are spending, Mr. Speaker, $13.4 billion a year in defending and protecting our southern border-- $13.4 billion. That turns out to be $6.7 million a mile. The Border Patrol has come to the committee on numerous occasions and given testimony.
I have asked them: What percentage of those who attempt to cross the border do you interdict successfully?
Their answer before the committee has been: We think about 25 percent.
They get about one in four who try to get across the border. So, presumably, three out of four make it in. I would call that a 25 percent efficiency rate.
Then I go down to the border and I talk to the officers and the agents down there. This includes Border Patrol and ICE.
I ask: So you are stopping about 25 percent?
Their answer that comes back to me as the most consistent is: No. Ten percent has to come first.
I have had estimates by ICE officers who operate near the border who will say they think it is closer to 2 to 3 percent. Now, I don't know that that is the right number, and I don't want to assert here, Mr. Speaker, into this Record that I think we are only stopping 2 to 3 percent of those who attempt to get across the border. I am suggesting that that is certainly a number that is plausible. It comes from the people who should know the most, and if the Border Patrol on the border says 10 percent has to come first, they might be thinking that 2 to 3 percent sounds all right. I am not even focused on those numbers of 2 to 3, up to 10 percent. I will take it to a 25 percent number and say that could be an inflated number, but it is still an awful number to consider for return on investment if you are going to spend $13.4 billion a year every single year and get 25 percent efficiency on $6.7 million a mile.
I need to put this into a context so that people understand what it really is. And that is that a lot of us live out in the country on gravel roads. And in the flat country in Iowa, we have a gravel road at every mile.
Now, let's just say General Kelly came to me now--and I really would have said Janet Napolitano or maybe Jeh Johnson--and said: I have a proposal for you. I want you to secure a mile of country road--a gravel road out there--and I am going to offer you $6.7 million a mile to secure that for each year on a 10-year contract. So here is $67 million in contract, and you are going to have to guard this mile for a year, and you can let 75 percent of the people through who are trying to get across that road, and I am still going to pay you.
Does that sound like a good deal?
There is hardly any American who wouldn't take that deal. That is not a very good deal. President Trump will recognize how bad a deal that is. It is a terrible deal. Yet we are stuck with that $13.4 billion, 25 percent efficiency, and $6.7 million a mile. Now, these numbers, probably, are blurring some people in their minds, Mr. Speaker; so I take it back to this: $6.7 million a mile. We have built a four-lane Highway 20 across Iowa, with just a few miles left to go, and we will finish it very soon--the stretch through the expensive Iowa cornfields, crossing rivers with expensive bridges, and building that four-lane highway that is everything, except in name, the equivalent of an interstate highway: four lanes, a median in the middle, fences on either side, seeding, signage--all of the things--the bells and the whistles--that it takes to build an interstate highway.
I am going to pause for just a second while people think: $6.7 million a mile to guard our southern border, and we are building nothing down there? How much does it cost to build that interstate highway across expensive Iowa cornfields?
$4 million a mile in the books and nearly completed. It will come in right at that number, and that is with buying the expensive cornfield; it is doing the archaeological and the environmental and the engineering; the land acquisition; the grading--and I have spent over 40 years in the earthmoving business--and the paving--and we do structural concrete work.
By the way, I scooped some of the concrete into the last forms up there in Highway 20, and I am proud of it and am happy to have had the privilege to have done it--painting the stripes on the highway, shouldering it, seeding it, fencing it. We shouldn't forget that this is four lanes of highway and a fence with a median in the middle and all of the bells and whistles that go on with an interstate highway for $4 million a mile. And they are telling me it is going to cost what to build, $15 billion to $30 billion?
Let's see. $13 billion is 6.7; so you are at about $8.5 billion or so. So he is suggesting a price per mile that is multiples of the cost of what it is costing us to build an interstate highway.
I don't have any doubt that we can go down there and build a concrete wall. I want to build a fence, a wall, and a fence. So we have two no- man's-lands--one on either side of the wall--and I have it wide enough that you can turn a patrol vehicle around in that no-man's-land. If you catch anybody in that no-man's-land, I want it to be the presumption that you are unlawfully present in the United States of America, and then they will get an immediate deportation. If they want to appeal the deportations, they can do so from their home countries and not be sitting here on welfare in the United States of America. That is the objective of what we can do.
As for the number that I put into the record back in 2005 that, I said, upholds today, I will just say this: it is less than $2 million a mile. If we reached into that $13.4-billion-a-year budget and just carved out $1 billion a year until we get the fence, the wall, and the fence constructed, we would soon have this done. We would have it done in a reasonable time, and we would have it done with a little squeeze into the budget. If they want to go into another account, that is okay with me, but let's get this done. We can do slip form concrete with a slip form notch in the center of that to drop precast panels in. We can pour those precast panels right down there on the job site. We can make them any height that the President wants it to be. They can be tongue and groove. They can be latched together. We can build fixtures right into that concrete to mount any kind of devices we like for monitoring.
Here is what America needs to understand, Mr. Speaker: it is not a fence. It is a wall. The wall is the centerpiece--a fence, a wall, and a fence. The centerpiece is a concrete wall that is designed to keep people out, not to keep people in.
My colleagues on this side of the aisle constantly are bringing up the topic, asking: Do you want to create another Berlin Wall?
I looked throughout history. In fact, I asked the question of one of America's best historians--among the top two favorite authors that I have--Victor Davis Hanson of southern California. I asked him as I have asked the question many times: Do you know of any barrier in history--a fence or a wall--that was designed to keep people in that was a national boundary or a barrier that was built by a nation-state other than the Berlin Wall?
He thought for a while, and he said: You might say that the fence and the structures in between North and South Korea are at least, in part, designed to keep North Koreans in.
I will concede that point. There is a fence and a wall between North and South Korea designed to keep the subjects of Marxism in their country because they want to escape to freedom. And the Berlin Wall was designed to keep the people in East Berlin from a Marxist society because they wanted to escape to freedom. Those barriers are immoral for those reasons, because they are fencing people in that want to escape to freedom.
But when you are a nation-state, and you are having a flow of people coming from without, there are many examples in history where there have been barriers, particularly walls, that have been built to keep people out. It is fundamentally different to have a wall to keep people out rather than a wall to keep people in.
If we forget the history of what built the Great Wall of China, think of this: the Great Wall of China was built originally to keep the Mongols out of greater China. As they were running raids down and doing the things that happen with raids--raping, pillaging, stealing, and heading back to Mongolia--the Chinese decided that they only had a couple of things they could do. They could submit and be raped, murdered, and robbed incessantly and relentlessly; and the fruit of their labor would be taken by the people who would kill them and assault them. They could mount raids to go back up
to Mongolia and punish the perpetrators and maybe they would quit coming back in.
They concluded that that wasn't going to stop it. The punitive raids that were coming down into China were not going to end. So they began building the Great Wall of China.
They had many segments of the Great Wall of China. It wasn't a continuous 5,500 miles, as we used to declare it to be. It is now 13,000 miles long. It was segments where they thought it would do the most good.
Then, by 245 B.C., that is Before Christ as Western civilization counts time, the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, came to power. He decided that he would connect the segments of the Great Wall of China so it was one continuous wall. He sent the laborers to work doing that, and they completed the Great Wall of China.
In the last few years, the Chinese have examined that wall with satellite images and concluded it was longer than 5,500 miles. It was 13,000 miles long altogether, which means it had to be ziggity-zaggity or it would have run a long ways from there. That is an impressive structure.
We are not talking about 13,000 miles or 5,500 miles. We are talking about 2,000 miles. And we are not talking about something that you can march troops on top of, which the Japanese surely did when they invaded China.
Instead, we are talking about a barrier that is roughly 6 inches thick of concrete that goes up as tall as the President wants it to go with wires on top that have a signal in them. And if anyone attempts to breach the top of that wall, that signal will send it to our control stations. It will immediately focus enforcement to that location. It will have vibration sensors so that if anybody tries to dig underneath it, it will pick that up as well. It will have monitoring cameras and all the bells and whistles, the accessories necessary for us to protect all of it. It will pay for itself, and it will pay for itself likely before we even get it completed. Here are some of the reasons why.
I had some law enforcement officers in my office today, and they are fighting the drug problems that we have in the United States. They would assert that in the upper 90th percentile is the percentage of some of the illegal drugs that come into the United States of America, like the opioids, the heroin, the methamphetamines. The ratios of those are in the 90th percentile and above.
Marijuana is a little bit lower than that because Colorado and California are taking some of that market. Thanks, Colorado and California, and a number of other States. What they have done is spread marijuana in big numbers across this land, and it is a gateway drug.
The illegal drugs consumed in America, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, are 80 to 90 percent. And these categories I am talking about with heroin, opioids, and methamphetamines that are in the 90th percentile, they come from or through Mexico.
So it doesn't mean that they are producing them all in Mexico, but they might be produced south of Mexico. They might be produced in China and come on into Mexico and then be brought into the United States because the border is so porous.
It is not just the illegal aliens. It is also the criminals, the drug smugglers, and the drug trade. The Mexican Government has announced, in less than a decade, they have had 100,000 people who were killed in the drug wars. The drug wars are coming about because there is a huge demand in the United States for these drugs, some $60 billion market for illegal drugs in America. So that demand is being met by, in many cases, Mexicans, but also Central and South Americans who set this network up and this drug distribution chain.
I asked the Drug Enforcement Agency: What happens if magically tomorrow morning everybody wakes up in their home country and there is not a single illegal alien in the United States of America, not one person unlawfully present in America; what happens to the illegal drug distribution system then?
They tell me it severs at least one link in every distribution chain of illegal drugs in America. It severs at least one link and, in some cases, every link and, in most cases, many links. That means that we have an illegal immigration problem and an illegal drug problem that are tied together, it creates the stream within which this traffic flows, and it brings about the crime and the death.
Mr. Speaker, we have people now who are sitting in there thinking: Well, but how did 100,000 people become victims of a drug war homicide or drug wars? How did 100,000 people get killed in Mexico? We don't have anywhere near that level of death in the United States.
Oh, we don't categorize it that way is why. There were 762 homicides in Chicago last year. How many of those were drug related? Well, I would say most of them, to some degree or another.
When I ask our law enforcement personnel: How many people would be in prison if there was no abuse of illegal drugs or alcohol? Would there be 10 percent?
Their answer is: Probably not. Probably fewer than 10 percent would be the population of our prisons if we could put an end to drug abuse. Also included in that is alcohol abuse, substance abuse.
So a lot of lives were lost in Mexico distributing the $60 billion worth of illegal drugs into the U.S. economy. How about the lives lost in Chicago and the major cities when you have the drug wars, the gang wars that are fueled by drug abuse and fueled by the drug distribution? That is only a small part. The 762 homicide victims in Chicago are a small part.
The National Institutes of Health has some data out that shows that over 55,000 Americans died in the last fiscal year due to drug overdose. So the Mexicans lost 100,000 people in the drug wars over a period of less than a decade. In America, we are losing that many people in 2 years just to drug overdose; and that doesn't count the homicide victims who are part of these drug wars that are going on in the streets of America.
There is a disaster in this country. We can't tolerate the lawlessness that exists in this country. We have to address the border security. And for those who say that we don't need to build a wall, we can build a virtual wall, well, if you look up the word ``virtual,'' do you know what it says? ``Not real.'' It is not real.
So that means, if they want to build a virtual wall, they want to build a not real wall. I recall being down there to weld some landing wall on the Arizona border with then-Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, who I happen to appreciate his personality. He was a good enough judge to pick up the welder and weld some of that himself with his own hand. But I welded some, and that is more my trade than it was his.
I handed the welder back, and I said: Now, I have welded the literal wall here. Why don't you hand me that virtual welder, and I will weld the virtual wall with that?
I wanted to make my point that it didn't work.
They promoted the virtual wall under the Bush administration, and I don't know if they actually even tried to even do that under the Obama administration. They came in and set up cameras and towers. They had ground-based radar, and they were going to track everybody that came into America and chase them down and abduct them. They ended up with cameras laying out in the desert that were never installed and a software package that was supposed to coordinate that never happened. And, in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted trying to build a virtual wall.
So I say this: If you want a virtual wall, if you want to put balloons in the air, if you want to do vibration sensors in the ground, if you want to run electric signals up on top of the wall, if you want to set cameras up there, I am fine. Do all of that.
Let's build the wall, as the American people demanded and chatted and as President Trump promised. Let's build a solid, structural, reinforced, concrete wall that is thick enough and tall enough and deep enough so that it is difficult to get over, under, around or through. If we do that, we have to man it and defend it. And if we put on the accessories, the bells and whistles, the vibration sensors, the cameras, and we build a fence, a wall, and a fence so that there is a double no-man's-land--one on either side of the wall--we can do that with far less manpower.
If I am assigned to guard my one-mile road that runs west of my house in the country in Iowa, and they hand me a contract for $67 million, I can tell you, I would build a fence, a wall, and a fence right down through the middle of that road. I would have a patrol road on either side. I would have the fences and the road ditches the way they are. I would grade that thing out so I would have fast track to patrol it. I would have sensors along there. I would make the infrastructural investment that would not be $4 million a mile. It would be someplace around that zone of a couple million dollars a mile.
Then I would monitor that, and I would have some people who are assigned to patrol it just enough that I could call in the reinforcements when we needed them. We would get a lot more than 25 percent efficiency out of that wall. We would get someplace equivalent to Israeli-level security efficiency if we build that entire structure end to end.
Now, I have said that we don't have to build a full 2,000 miles of it, but we have to be certain that we don't equivocate on the mission to build it until they stop going around the end. If they stop, fine. If they don't stop, we have got to be committed to add another section and another section until such time as we have completed this in the same fashion that the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, did when he completed the Great Wall of China, 13,000 miles long which the armies marched on top of.
Build a wall and enforce the laws that we have on the books and bring into play local law enforcement so that we can work in cooperative fashion. Every level of law enforcement has always cooperated with the other levels of law enforcement. I grew up in a law enforcement family. I believe that the men around me all wore uniforms. It just was a natural thing to see. And if they weren't in uniform, they weren't at work. If they were either on their way or at work, coming home from work or at work, they wore uniforms.
Each level of law enforcement, whether it was city police, whether it was county sheriff and deputy, whether it was highway patrol division of criminal investigation--DCI in my State or DPS in a State like Texas, for example--or whether Federal officers, Federal Marshals, FBI, they cooperated with each other. No one took the posture that said it is not my job. When they encountered somebody violating the law, they enforced the law against them. There is Federal statute that reinforces such a thing.
Who would think that we could get to a place in this country where city police, county officers, or State law enforcement officers would be directed to plug their ears and close their eyes--and I am saying this figuratively--and essentially not gather any information on people who are unlawfully present in the United States of America, bringing about the circumstances where a Kate Steinle would be murdered or where a Sarah Root would be murdered or where a Dominic Durden would be murdered, or where a Jaz Shaw would be murdered? All were murdered by criminal aliens who had no business being in this country, all who were murdered by those who had been encountered by law enforcement and who had later on turned them loose onto the streets of America resulting in the death of these innocents, including Brandon Mendoza. There are many, many others. There are thousands of others.
President Trump has said thousands of families are grieving the loss of their loved ones at the hands of illegal aliens who are violent, who should have been deported. They were not deported; they were turned loose on the streets of America, usually in sanctuary cities, sanctuary counties, sanctuary States.
Now we have the emergence of sanctuary campuses or sanctuary school districts. I will make the mention that it is a quarter after 6 p.m. in Iowa now, Mr. Speaker. And in an hour and 45 minutes, the Des Moines public school board is preparing to pass a sanctuary resolution that tells all the employees of the school district that you can't work with, cooperate, transfer, disseminate information, or allow access to students or family to any Federal immigration officers. It all has to go through the superintendent, and he has to approve it. They won't even allow an ICE officer to talk to a parent of any of the students there, unless the superintendent approves it. Of course, it is designed for him to say: No, sorry. We are going to close the door in your face, and we are a sanctuary school system, and we are going to defy Federal law.
Well, Mr. Speaker, we have existing laws to address this, and I want to remind the school district that there are a couple of sections of the code that apply, and one of them is U.S.C. 1324, harboring illegal aliens. There is a penalty of from 5 to 10 years for violation, depending on whether it is a class D or a class C felony. Anyone who harbors or shields from detection, including in any building or any means of transportation; anyone who encourages an alien to come to, enter, or reside; anyone who engages in any conspiracy; anyone who aids or abets the commission of such crimes is guilty of a class D or a class C felony, facing potential penalty of a maximum of 5 or 10 years, depending on the class.
I have the section of the code here, Mr. Speaker, and I include in the Record this copy of 8 U.S.C. 1373 and also 1324.
8 U.S. Code Sec. 1324--Bringing In and Harboring Certain Aliens
(a) Criminal Penalties
(1)
(A) Any person who--
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or
attempts to bring to the United States in any manner
whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated
port of entry or place other than as designated by the
Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received
prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in
the United States and regardless of any future official
action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an
alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States
in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to
transport or move such alien within the United States by
means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such
violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an
alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States
in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from
detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from
detection, such alien in any place, including any building or
any means of transportation;
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or
reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard
of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or
will be in violation of law; or
(v)
(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the
preceding acts, or
(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding
acts,
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
(B) A person who violates subparagraph (A) shall, for each
alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs--
(i) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i) or
(v)(1) or in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii),
(iii), or (iv) in which the offense was done for the purpose
of commercial advantage or private financial gain, be fined
under title 18, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both;
(ii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii),
(iii), (iv), or (v)(II), be fined under title 18, imprisoned
not more than 5 years, or both;
(iii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i),
(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) during and in relation to which the
person causes serious bodily injury (as defined in section
1365 of title 18 (/uscode/text/8/1365)) to, or places in
jeopardy the life of any person, be fined under title 18,
imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
(iv) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i),
(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) resulting in the death of any
person, be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of
years or for life, fined under title 18, or both.
(C) It is not a violation of clauses [1] (ii) or
(iii) of subparagraph (A), or of clause (iv) of subparagraph
(A) except where a person encourages or induces an alien to
come to or enter the United States, for a religious
denomination having a bona fide nonprofit, religious
organization in the United States, or the agents or officers
of such denomination or organization, to encourage, invite,
call, allow, or enable an alien who is present in the United
States to perform the vocation of a minister or missionary
for the denomination or organization in the United States as
a volunteer who is not compensated as an employee,
notwithstanding the provision of room, board, travel, medical
assistance, and other basic living expenses, provided the
minister or missionary has been a member of the denomination
for at least one year.
(2) Any person who, knowing or in reckless disregard of the
fact that an alien has not received prior official
authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United
States, brings to or attempts to bring to the United
States in any manner whatsoever, such alien, regardless of
any official action which may later be taken with respect to
such alien shall, for each alien in respect to whom a
violation of this paragraph occurs--
(A) be fined in accordance with title 18 or imprisoned not
more than one year, or both; or
(B) in the case of--
(i) an offense committed with the intent or with reason to
believe that the alien unlawfully brought into the United
States will commit an offense against the United States or
any State punishable by imprisonment for more than 1 year,
(ii) an offense done for the pupose of commercial advantage
or private financial gain, or
(iii) an offense in which the alien is not upon arrival
immediately brought and presented to an appropriate
immigration officer at a designated port of entry,
be fined under title 18 and shall be imprisoned, in the
case of a first or second violation of subparagraph (B)(ii),
not more than 10 years, in the case of a first or second
violation of subparagraph (B)(i) or B(ii), not less than 3
nor more than 10 years, and for any other violation, not less
than 5 nor more than 15 years.
(3)
(A) Any person who, during any 12-month period, knowingly
hires for employment at least 10 individuals with actual
knowledge that the individuals are aliens described in
subparagraph (B) shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned
for not more than 5 years, or both.
(B) An alien described in this subparagraph is an alien
who--
(i) is an unauthorized alien (as defined in section
1324a(h)(3) of this title (/uscode/text/8/
iii.usc:t:8:s:1324a:h:3)), and
(ii) has been brought into the United States in violation
of this subsection.
(4) In the case of a person who has brought aliens into the
United States in violation of this subsection, the sentence
otherwise provided for may be increased by up to 10 years
if--
(A) the offense was part of an ongoing commercial
organization or enterprise;
(B) aliens were transported in groups of 10 or more; and
(C)
(i) aliens were transported in a manner that endangered
their lives; or
(ii) the aliens presented a life-threatening health risk to
people in the United States.
(b) Seizure and Forfeiture
(1) In general
My conveyance, including any vessel vehicle, or aircraft,
that has been or is being used in the commission of a
violation of subsection (a), the gross proceeds of such
violation, and any property traceable to such conveyance or
proceeds, shall be seized and subject to forfeiture.
(2) Applicable procedures
Seizures and forfeitures under this subsection shall be
governed by the provisions of chapter 46 of title 18 (/
uscode/text/18/lii:usc:t:18:ch:46) relating to civil
forfeitures, including section 981(d) of such title, except
that such duties as are imposed upon the Secretary of the
Treasury under the customs laws described in that section
shall be performed by such officers, agents, and other
persons as may be designated for that purpose by the Attorney
General.
(3) Prima Facie Evidence in determinations of violations In
determining whether a violation of subsection (a) has
occurred, any of the following shall be prima facie evidence
that an alien involved in the alleged violation had not
received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or
reside in the United States or that such alien had come to,
entered, or remained in the United States in violation of
law:
(A) Records of any judicial or administrative proceeding in
which that alien's status was an issue and in which it was
determined that the alien had not received prior official
authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United
States or that such alien had come to, entered, or remained
in the United States in violation of law.
(B) Official records of the Service or of the Department of
State showing that the alien had not received prior official
authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United
States or that such alien had come to, entered, or remained
in the United States in violation of law.
(C) Testimony, by an migration officer having personal
knowledge of the facts concerning that alien's status, that
the alien had not received prior official authorization to
come to, enter. or reside in the United States or that such
alien had come to, entered, or remained in the United States
in violation of law.
(c) Authority to arrest
No officer or person shall have authority to make any
arrests for a violation of any provision of this section
except officers and employees of the Service designated by
the Attorney General, either individually or as a member of a
class, and all other officers whose duty it is to enforce
criminal laws.
(d) Admissibility of videotaped witness testimony
Notwithstanding any provision of the Federal Rules of
Evidence, the videotaped (or otherwise audiovisually
preserved) deposition of a witness to a violation of
subsection (a) who has been deported or otherwise expelled
from the United States, or is otherwise unable to testify,
may be admitted into evidence in an action brought for that
violation if the witness was available for cross examination
and the deposition otherwise complies with the Federal Rules
of Evidence.
(e) Outreach program
The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with
the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, as
appropriate, shall develop and implement an outreach program
to educate the public in the United States and abroad about
the penalties for bringing in and harboring aliens in
violation of this section.
(June 27, 1952, ch. 477, title II, ch. 8, 274,66 Stat. 228
(http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=66page=228);
Pub. L.95-582 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/ L?d095:./list/bd/d095pl.lst:582(Public_Laws)), Sec. 2, Nov.
2, 1978, 92 Stat. 2479 (http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=92&page=2479); Pub. L.97-116 (http:// thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?d097:./list/bd/
d097p1.lst:116(Public_Laws)), Sec. 12 Dec. 29, 1981, 95 Stat.
1617 (http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=95&page=1617); Pub.L. 99-603, title I
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?d099:./list/bd/
d099pl.lst:603(Public_Laws)), Sec. 112, Nov. 6, 1986, 100
Stat. 3381 (http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=100&page=3381); Pub.L. 100-525, (http:/
/thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?d100:./list/bd/
d100p1.lst:525(Public_Laws)), Sec. 2(d), Oct. 24, 1988, 102
Stat. 2610 (http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=102&page=2610); Pub. L. 103-322, title
VI (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?d103:list/bd/
d103pl.lst:322(Public_Laws)), Sec. 60024Sept. 13, 1994, 108
Stat. 1981 (http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=108&page=1981); Pub.L. 104-208, div. C,
title II (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/html/ PLAW-104publ208.htm), Sec. Sec. 203(a)-(d), 219 title VI,
Sec. 671(a)(1), Sept. 30, 1996, 110 Stat. 3009-565 (http:// uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=110&page=3009-565),
3009-566, 3009-574, 3009-720; Pub. L. 106-185 (http:// www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-106publ185/htm/PLAW- 106publ185.htm), Sec. 18(a), Apr. 25, 2000, 114 Stat 222
(http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=114&page=222);
Pub. L. 108-458, title V (http://www.gov.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW- 108publ458/htm/PLAW-108publ458.htm), Sec. 5401, Dec. 17,
2004, 118 Stat. 3737 (http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=118&page=3737); Pub. L. 109-497, title
VII (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-109publ97/html/PLAW- 109publ97.htm), Sec. 796, Nov. 10, 2005, 119 Stat. 2165
(http://uscode.house.gov/ statviewer.htm?volume=119&page=2165).)
Mr. Speaker, 8 U.S.C. 1373 addresses sanctuary cities, and it prohibits the sanctuary jurisdictions by Federal law. And that is exactly what they intend to carve out at 8 o'clock tonight in Des Moines, Iowa, to establish themselves as a sanctuary jurisdiction for the entire school district, the largest school district in the State of Iowa--not the most proficient in educating our precious Iowa students, but the largest.
So they make a political statement just at the time when the President has said that he is prepared to suspend all Federal dollars going to sanctuary jurisdictions, and that would include school districts and it would include, of course, cities and counties and States and any campus that decides they want to be a sanctuary campus.
This President will keep his word.
I would equate this showdown that they are building here, thinking that they can stare the President down and that he will blink and that somehow he won't have the nerve to address sanctuaries, the law-defined jurisdictions in America, the hole-in-the-wall gang holed up in San Francisco with more people being murdered in San Francisco--when I say ``hole-in-the-wall gang,'' I want to remind people, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they had a place in a canyon where you ride through a hole in the wall, and then they had a sanctuary for robbers and murderers and killers, but they had a code among them that they didn't kill each other very often. So they lived in this sanctuary. They were protected from the law; and they guarded and protected each other, and they guarded the notch through the stone wall in the canyon.
That is what these cities are and what the campuses are and some of the States and the counties, sanctuary jurisdictions like the hole-in- the-wall gang where they are harboring lawbreakers. Somehow, we are supposed to let this grow in America and not address it?
We had a Presidential election that focused exactly on this.
And, by the way, I brought amendments to the floor time after time to defund these sanctuary jurisdictions. Every one of them here in the House of Representatives since I have been here has succeeded. There is no unconstitutional act and no amnesty act that has been unchallenged here in the House of
Representatives--by amendment, at least--that I and others have brought. Every time the rule of law prevailed.
Now we have elected a President on the rule of law, and this President will not blink. I will remind the public as I speak to you, Mr. Speaker, that when Ronald Reagan was elected President, the air traffic controllers decided they would go out on strike. The President warned them: If you go on strike, you have got a contract, and you are, by law, prohibited from striking because it puts too many people at risk.
They said: Too bad. If we don't get what we demand, we are going on strike anyway.
They challenged the President of the United States. And what did Ronald Reagan do? He said: If you don't go back to work on the date that I tell you, I will fire anyone that doesn't show up.
And so they called the President, thinking it was a bluff. Mr. Speaker, it wasn't a bluff. Ronald Reagan fired every air traffic controller that didn't show up for work in defiance of the Federal law, and he put the military air traffic controllers to work to control the skies over America without one single fatal accident brought about by any of that. Ronald Reagan was called out by the air traffic controllers. They thought he was bluffing. He was not bluffing.
Now we have jurisdiction after jurisdiction that think they are going to be leading a national movement to accelerate the sanctuary city jurisdiction endeavor, and they think that President Trump is going to back up from them because there are a lot of them and somehow he won't be able to take this on.
I will submit this: If Ronald Reagan had blinked in the stare down between the air traffic controllers union, his Presidency would have collapsed. His power base would have diminished. He would have been an asterisk in history except for the snickers behind the hand of people that would have laughed at him because he would have caved in the face of first adversity.
Donald Trump faces a similar circumstance here with sanctuary jurisdictions. He has no choice. If he is going to have an effective Presidency--and I guarantee you, he is committed to an effective Presidency--there will be no sanctuary jurisdiction left in this country within several months or a year as this grinds through and as people like Mayor Rahm Emanuel are brought to bear and they begin to be reminded by, hopefully, the new Attorney General, maybe as soon as tomorrow, Jeff Sessions, that 8 U.S.C. 1324 means what it says: It is a felony to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection or attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection any such alien in any place, including a building or transportation--meaning anywhere. It is a serious felony.
8 U.S.C. 1373, sanctuary cities, just the policy is a violation of Federal law. And then when you have control of the purse strings, Mr. Speaker, and you cut off the Federal funds going to these jurisdictions, there isn't hardly anybody that is going to face this. I think I would start with maybe the mayor of Chicago, then the mayor of New York. I bet he can communicate with Mayor de Blasio.
The center of it all is this: Restore the respect for the rule of law. You have to enforce it if you are going to have laws. Once we do that, we will respect each other and America can go back to its constitutional foundation, and we can turn our focus to building our families, restoring our country, and helping other countries get up to speed into the first world.
Mexico can get to the first world, but they can't be there if it is going to be corrupt. They can't be there if they are going to be the main provider of $60 billion worth of illegal drugs in this country. They can't face another 100,000 people murdered, we can't face 55,000 drug overdose deaths in this country every year, and I haven't yet mentioned even the terrorists that are sneaking across that border on at least an irregular basis.
Mr. Speaker, it is serious business, and I urge that we get this done. I urge that the American people follow through and encourage the President of the United States, let's end DACA, let's end DAPA, and let's end the sanctuary jurisdictions. Build a wall. America will be in a better place.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the attention and your ear this evening. It has been my honor to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
I yield back the balance of my time.