Will Hurd

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

Mr. Chair, I am proud to join my good friend and fellow

former CIA officer, the gentlewoman from the Commonwealth of Virginia, to offer this bipartisan amendment that would direct the intelligence community to prioritize resources to address the humanitarian crisis at the border, in the Northern Triangle, and also in Mexico.

I represent more of the southern border than any other Member of Congress. The root causes of this current crisis are violence, extreme poverty, and lack of economic opportunity in the Northern Triangle--El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Drug cartels, human traffickers, and human smugglers are making this crisis worse and putting innocent lives at risk. They profit while people in Central America suffer and entire nations are destabilized.

Our intelligence community is not maximizing the use of our intelligence to deny and disrupt these operations.

In June, we all know that 104,000 people were detained at our border. Almost every one of them had a phone number of a smuggler, a license plate of a bus that brought them here, or a pickup location in their home country.

Understanding and disabling these smuggling and trafficking networks should be a national intelligence priority. This amendment would require the Director of National Intelligence to conduct a review of intelligence collection priorities in the Northern Triangle and Mexico and then provide quarterly briefings to Congress regarding the intelligence community activities in this region.

These individuals and organizations threaten the security of the United States and the Western Hemisphere, and we should be using intelligence to stop them.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am looking forward to working on more pieces of legislation with my friend from the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I want to thank both of the gentlemen from California and their teams for helping us perfect this to get this important piece of legislation onto the floor.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am in its current form.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues know I am the only Republican on the border. My colleagues know I am the only Member of Congress who has 820 miles along the border. My colleagues know that I have spent a good deal of my time up here working with them on things like stopping the separation of families along the border. My colleagues also know that I know that some Members are not for open borders.

It is an understatement to say that our Nation's immigration docket is a matter of concern. The caseload has increased by nearly fivefold since the end of 2008, and now it stands at roughly 9,000 cases. The average wait for nondetained individuals is over 670 days, with many individuals waiting much longer for an immigration hearing. The net effect of this untenable backlog situation is to delay justice, in many cases, for years for those with valid claims. This is simply outrageous.

The adjudication of immigration matters is essential to the proper administration of justice in our country. Congress must ensure that U.S. immigration laws are administered fairly, efficiently, and consistently with due process.

This motion adds $75 million to our immigration court system. It will support additional immigration judge teams and the expansion of courtroom capacity.

Now, some of my colleagues will say that there are already judges in this bill. There are. They meet the requests of, actually, this White House, but that is not enough.

In 2016, the ACLU came out and said that to get to the backlog there, to address the backlog then, which was only 500,000, we needed 500 immigration judge teams. We need more.

Many Members have already voted for more than this when they all helped me jam Republican leadership last year--or try to jam Republican leadership last year--on sorting out the immigration issue.

Now, some of my colleagues will say that taking money away from Census to do that is not the right way to go. This underlying bill funds the Census 40 percent above the President's request. That is more than $2.3 billion. This bill includes $8 billion, with or without this amendment.

Most importantly, this motion to recommit does not address or change the question that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have addressed in this bill, and that is whether or not the citizenship question can be added on the 2020 Census. This bill says it cannot. This motion to recommit does not change that.

Let me repeat. This motion to recommit does not change that.

We are taking money out of the Census reserve slush fund. This is money that may or may not be used. We can hold on to this funding for unforeseen problems, or we can use this funding now to help solve a problem we see loud and clear.

Our current shortage of immigration judges delays justice for individuals who have valid immigration claims, while preserving many years of continued illegal presence for others who do

not. Worse still, the allure of our weakened system entices migrants to undertake the incredibly dangerous journey north with young children.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this motion to help reverse these regrettable and unsustainable trends caused by our broken immigration system, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the 10th Anniversary of Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Since its establishment in 2009, A&M-San Antonio has transformed into a bustling, centralized University that has awarded over 8,000 degrees on the Southside of San Antonio, so students are prepared to take on the challenges of the 21st Century.

Additionally, the University is reflective of the rich heritage of the community it serves, with a student body that's 60-percent female, 72-percent Hispanic and 77-percent first-generation college students. I am proud to represent a University that is playing a hands-on role in moving our country forward, and I know this is only the beginning.

On behalf of the Twenty-third Congressional District of Texas, congratulations to Texas A&M University-San Antonio on this achievement and go jaguars.