[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 119 (Monday, July 28, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H6948-H6953]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                BEYOND THE FEARS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jolly). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives, this great deliberative body that we are in. We have 
had a lot of debates and discussions here on the floor over the time 
that I have had the privilege to serve Americans and Iowans in the 
Fourth District of Iowa.
  Coming into this year, early in the year--in late January--we held a 
conference in Cambridge, Maryland, a conference to get together and 
discuss our best legislative strategy for this calendar year, which is 
the balance of the 113th Congress that we are in, Mr. Speaker. The 
discussion, invariably, came around to the immigration issue. Now, the 
immigration issue is a political issue. It is, perhaps, the most 
complex issue that we have dealt with in the time that I have been here 
in Congress. It has implications and ramifications that go well beyond 
things that seem to be simplistic on their face.
  In that discussion, it became very clear that House Republicans, at 
least, didn't want to move on anything that would give the opportunity 
by the majority leader in the Senate--Senator Harry Reid--and those who 
advocated for the Senate Gang of Eight bill to be able to attach any of 
that language on any bill that might emerge from the House. The 
consensus clearly--and it was 3 or 4-1, Mr. Speaker--was not to take up 
the immigration issue this year because the very sovereignty of the 
United States was put at risk, and there was no upside. The only 
beneficiaries out of it would be people who are unlawfully present in 
the United States, the people who are hiring cheap labor and profiting 
from that cheap labor, and the people who are on the other side of the 
aisle in the political party that recognizes that this country has 11 
or more million people in it who are undocumented Democrats. They would 
like that number to be larger, and they would like to then document 
those Democrats so that they can be voting Democrats. I understand the 
motive, I believe, of the people on the other side of the aisle.
  Without assigning a motive to the President of the United States, Mr. 
Speaker, it appears to me that the policies that he has advocated for 
bring in millions of people who are unlawful to the United States, who 
have an unlawful presence. I will say that his DACA policy--his 
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is what he names it, and what I 
declare it to be is the Deferred Action for Criminal Aliens--has turned 
into a huge magnet. It is a magnet that has been attracting people from 
south of the border for a long time. The President issued the order in 
June of 2012.
  It is an unconstitutional order, in my opinion. It is a considered 
constitutional opinion, Mr. Speaker, and I have put my own personal 
capital on the line to assert such points in the past and have 
prevailed. I do understand this ``separation of powers'' issue and this 
constitutional issue. When the Congress establishes immigration law, 
part of that law says that Federal immigration enforcement officers, 
when they encounter someone who is unlawfully present in the United 
States, have an obligation. The language is they ``shall'' place him in 
removal proceedings. Yet the President has issued an order that 
commands the Federal officers, including the ICE agents, to violate the 
law or to, say, ignore the law, which is the equivalent of violating 
the law, Mr. Speaker. This is what we are up against.
  We have a President who taught constitutional law for 10 years at the 
University of Chicago's school of law as an adjunct professor--10 years 
of teaching the Constitution and all of these years to contemplate his 
oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the 
United States of America, so help him God, and to take care--this is 
linked to the President's oath. It is not exactly the verbiage, but it 
is exactly the language in our Constitution that he shall take care 
that the laws be faithfully executed. Instead, it appears that he has 
misinterpreted the words ``faithfully executed,'' and he has faithfully 
killed off the law. It didn't mean when written in the Constitution, 
``faithfully executed,'' to kill off the law. What it meant was carry 
out the law, implement the law, enforce the law. That is what 
``faithfully execute'' means. You would think that any adjunct 
professor, especially a constitutional law professor, would know that, 
Mr. Speaker, and I know that he does. Yet he still issued the DACA 
language. He still issued the Morton Memos.
  When Janet Napolitano, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, came 
before the Judiciary Committee to testify on this DACA language and on 
the Morton Memos, she repeated many times in her testimony the language 
that is in the memo that came out, which is on an individual basis 
only. They created with the Morton Memos four different classes of 
people, Mr. Speaker, and if people came into the United States of 
America before their 18th birthdays--or successfully alleged that they 
did--and if they arrived here before December 31 of 2011, which 
conforms with the Senate Gang of Eight language, I might add, then they 
would be granted temporary legal status for 2 years in this country, 
and they were granted work permits--manufactured out of thin air. I say 
``out of thin air'' because it is unconstitutional for the President to 
manufacture immigration law. The Constitution reserves immigration law 
for the United States Congress, not for the President of the United 
States.

  In fact, there is a reason that we are article I. The Congress is 
article I because we are the most important of the three branches of 
government. They wanted the voice of the people to set the policy for 
America, and they wanted the President to carry it out. By the way, the 
President has lectured to that effect over here at a high school not 
very far from us. I believe the date was March 28 of 2011.
  I know it was March 28 when they asked him: Why don't you pass the 
DREAM Act by executive order or executive edict?
  The President said to them: You have been studying the Constitution. 
You are smart people. You know that Congress' job is to pass the laws, 
and my job is to enforce the laws, and the judiciary branch's job is to 
interpret the laws.
  It was a very clean and concise analysis of the three branches of 
government. The President delivered that in a lecture on March 28, 
2011. By June of 2012--I think that is how those dates worked out--the 
President had already gone back on the lecture he had given to the high 
school students and had decided that he could, after all, manufacture 
immigration law out of thin air. It is lawless to do that. The law 
doesn't allow him to do that. The supreme law

[[Page H6949]]

of the land doesn't allow him to do that, but he pulled it off anyway.
  What is the restraint, Mr. Speaker? What is the restraint that this 
Congress has?
  These Members of Congress go home, and their constituents stand up in 
a town hall meeting, and they say: Restrain this President. Put the 
immigration law back in order. Enforce the law. Do not let this 
President defy the law or change the law.
  They believe somehow that this Congress has the tools to restrain a 
President who has so little respect for the language that we have 
passed into law here in this Congress. Now, there is no way to get 
around certain pieces of language. There is no way to get around it. He 
will go around everything that there is a way around. He has checked 
the fences constantly--he has got minions of lawyers who are doing 
that--but he gets to a certain place where the law doesn't allow it any 
longer.
  For example, the work component of welfare to work only existed 
within TANF, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The President 
decided he would manufacture waivers so that the people who were 
collecting TANF benefits didn't have to work. The work requirement was 
suspended even though that language was written so that then-President 
Clinton couldn't suspend the work component of Temporary Assistance for 
Needy Families. That was a big part of welfare reform; yet President 
Obama simply granted waivers and suspended the work component, so now 
there is no longer a work component that is effective in TANF.
  That is not lawful. That is not constitutional. You have to litigate 
this thing through the courts to no end, and to get an answer back out 
of the courts before the President goes off to his never-never land of 
perpetual golfing outings is very, very difficult to do. The longer 
that we are in court, the more Federal judges are appointed by this 
President who are selected to agree with him. That is just Temporary 
Assistance for Needy Families and the work component.
  Also, as to No Child Left Behind, waiver, waiver, waiver to the point 
where No Child Left Behind no longer has anything left. It has all been 
left behind, and the President has nullified it by executive edict even 
though it was a big piece of legislation that was passed in this 
Congress in a bipartisan way, negotiated and supported by then-Senator 
Teddy Kennedy and signed by President George Bush. This reflected at 
the time the will of the people.
  Now, I am not taking any position, Mr. Speaker, that I support this, 
but I am suggesting this: the Constitution is the supreme law of the 
land. When Congress passes a law and a President signs the law, that is 
the law, and any subsequent President has an obligation to enforce that 
law and to carry it out unless and until the Congress should amend it. 
If the President should want to see the Congress repeal or amend a law, 
it is pretty easy for the President to find a Member of the House of 
Representatives to introduce a piece of legislation that reflects the 
wish and, perhaps, the will of the President. So there is a means to 
change it in the same way that there is a means to amend this 
Constitution that I carry in my jacket pocket each day.
  This Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It guides us, and 
there is a provision to amend it. If we don't like the policy that 
results from this Constitution--the base document or the various 
amendments that are attached to it now after this course of history--we 
can amend the Constitution. We can bring it before the House and the 
Senate with a two-thirds vote, and we can message it to the States in 
its having been approved by the House and the Senate, and the States 
can set about ratifying an amendment to the Constitution.
  Until then, I would say this, Mr. Speaker, to the President of the 
United States and to all who aspire to be President, to all who aspire 
to serve in the United States House, in the United States Senate, or in 
any capacity of trust with the people: understand that this is the 
supreme law of the land. You are bound by it until such time as it 
might be amended. You cannot redefine it, and you cannot wish it away, 
and you cannot ignore it. You cannot violate this supreme law of the 
land. It is the framework upon which all of our laws are written. It is 
an important, important document that sets about and defines the 
separation of powers--the legislative branch, the executive branch, and 
the judicial branch of government.
  We have a President who has gone beyond the imagination of our 
Founding Fathers. He has gone beyond the fears that our Founding 
Fathers used when they drafted such a beautiful document, which has 
survived in pretty good health for these centuries that we have had it. 
The President has now gone to a place where he decides whether he is 
going to enforce a law or not, and he has the audacity to step up and 
just seek to change the law by press conference. He did this on 
ObamaCare. He stood out in the Rose Garden with the Great Seal of the 
United States, and he said he was now going to make an accommodation to 
the religious organizations in the country. Rather than requiring them 
to do what the rules of ObamaCare were written to require them to do, 
he was now going to require the insurance companies to do that with no 
charge--the insurance companies, no charge.

                              {time}  2045

  Now, I went back and checked, checked the law, ObamaCare. I checked 
all the rules that had been written. I checked to see if they had 
amended the rule in any way, if there had been a public comment period, 
if they followed the Administrative Procedures Act. Nothing. There is 
not an I dotted differently; there is not a T crossed differently.
  The insurance companies stepped up to do what the President had 
commanded them to do by voice, verbally, in a press conference. That is 
not law. That is not a republic. That doesn't result even in a 
civilization.
  Now we have this tragedy going on on the southern border that is a 
result of the President deciding that he could suspend law and decide 
not to enforce the law, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask how much time I have remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Iowa has 35 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I will try to conform my comments into 
that time period.
  Mr. Speaker, the immigration issue has emerged now as the number one 
topic in front of the American people again. I had hoped that we had 
set it aside. I had hoped that we would go through this year and that 
we would be focusing on the things that are so important to us.
  This is a topic that has emerged because of the human trafficking and 
the human suffering that is taking place, and I would like to deliver a 
report on what I have seen just over this past weekend and how it fits 
in with some of the other things I have been involved in, especially on 
our border.
  As I listened to the dialogue emerge and I heard ideas emerging in 
our conference, it was important that I go down to the border and take 
a fresh look at the most porous component of our border, where they 
have the most illegal crossings along our 2,000-mile border with 
Mexico. This a was portion of the border that I had not traveled in the 
past.
  When I add up the places that I have traveled for border inspection, 
it covers, I believe, every mile of California and Arizona and New 
Mexico in one fashion or another, whether it is by air or whether it is 
on the ground. Some of those times it is sitting down there at night 
listening and waiting for people to come across the border. I have been 
involved in the interdiction of illegal drugs. I have unloaded drugs 
out of the false beds of trucks and been there as part of the--I will 
say an observer in the team that is interdicting illegal aliens who are 
drug smugglers, who are MS-13.
  That carries me on over into the Texas border where I have done 
several segments of it, but I had not been to the southern tip of 
Texas. I hadn't been to McAllen. I hadn't been to Brownsville and the 
region down there. So, since that is the most porous section now--or, I 
should say, the highest trafficking section now--I headed down that way 
last Friday night and arrived there relatively late Friday evening.
  I got up early in the morning and went out to the mouth of the Rio 
Grande River. Of course the Rio Grande

[[Page H6950]]

River is the dividing line through there between the United States and 
Mexico, between Texas and Mexico. There is a road that leads out to the 
gulf, and once you get out to the gulf, you can take about a 3-mile 
drive down the beach to the south to get to the outlet of the Rio 
Grande River.
  So we drove down that 3 miles of sandy beach and down to the mouth of 
the Rio Grande River to observe that location where I would say, once 
we are forced into and once this Congress concludes that we should 
build a fence, a wall, and a fence on our southern border, I wanted to 
go to the place where you would set the furthest, most easterly 
cornerpost in order to start building the fence, the wall, and the 
fence. That is near the mouth of the Rio Grande River.
  I went there, looked at that, set a flag there to locate the 
perimeter of the United States of America, observed as people from 
Mexico were waiting around out around the outlet of the Rio Grande 
River and easily can wade across that into the United States, as they 
can in many places along the river up and down the Rio Grande.
  From there, I traveled back again and into Brownsville, where we 
visited three ports of entry in Brownsville and also a not-for-profit 
entity that was working under the auspices of Health and Human Services 
that was in the business of housing unaccompanied alien children until 
such time as they were relocated someplace into the United States.
  From there, we traveled then to McAllen, where we received a briefing 
at the sector center, the border patrol sector, McAllen sector center, 
in a conference room with good people at the table; then from there, 
out into the detention area where they are incarcerating individuals 
that they are interdicting along the border.
  Those numbers have diminished substantially over the last 3 to 4 
weeks, Mr. Speaker, into some number that I recognize to be a little 
bit less than half of the peak amount that were pouring through into 
the United States illegally.
  Then from there, we went into the holding facilities. We were freely 
able to walk through and look at everything that was there. Then we 
went over to a location of a large building that the Border Patrol had 
retrofitted in a very fast and, looked to me, like a very efficient 
setup turnaround to be prepared to handle a lot of unaccompanied alien 
children who were in a huge building with dividing segments in there, 
all of it air-conditioned, with Health and Human Services workers there 
playing barefoot soccer indoors in air-conditioning, which I am sure 
was a new experience for those kids that were there.
  From there, we went out for a briefing with the Department of Public 
Safety and the Texas Rangers to get a different perspective, a 
perspective from the State and the State officials, the law enforcement 
officers that are eyes-on, hands-on, and they are engaged and they are 
working hand-in-glove with the Border Patrol, Customs, Border 
Protection, and ICE.
  I have been impressed with our professional officers all the way 
along the way. Everybody in a uniform that I encountered was a good, 
solid, squared-away, professional individual that input good 
information to us.
  After the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers gave us 
their briefing, which lasted nearly 2 hours, then we went on out and 
rode with a Department of Public Safety officer who took us out to 
observe the night operations of helicopter surveillance overhead and 
the spotlights from the helicopters and the other devices that they 
have that help them locate people that are sneaking into America, 
whether they are being trafficked as human or whether they are drug 
trafficking going in.
  Then, the next morning, we picked up and began to poke our way 
upstream towards Laredo. Well, first I should mention that I went to 
church at Sacred Heart Church there in McAllen, Texas, a Spanish mass, 
and went over next door to the parish center and the church parking lot 
where they have converted that into a relief center where they are 
processing people through and giving them a shower if they need it, 
medication if they need it, a light meal, and a bag of goodies to 
travel with before they go to the bus station to be bused up into the 
United States.
  From that location, then we went out to a park where it has been in 
the national news consistently. The name of the park starts with the 
letter A. I can't repeat it from memory, Mr. Speaker, but there we saw 
many, many enforcement officers. We saw Border Patrol. We saw county 
sheriffs, a constable, and we also saw unmarked undercover officers 
that were there. They had the park pretty well covered.
  There were a lot of people, a lot of Mexicans on the other side of 
the river who were playing in the water in the river, and jet skis were 
going back and forth. We know those jets ski are often used to ferry 
people across to the United States. It was unlikely for that to happen 
there that day because there was so much cover from law enforcement, 
but they were posted so consistently along that they did provide a 
deterrent.
  So from there, we poked our way up the river to a small town. 
``Ramos'' is pretty close to the spelling of it. It is a small. It is a 
short-lettered town, a relatively small town and an old town.
  There, as we pulled up to the port of entry and took a look across 
the bridge into Mexico, there was an officer there that gave us a piece 
of information which is: If you are here from the United States 
Congress, thank you. Thank you for coming to see what is going on. If 
you want to see illegals crossing into the United States, take a right 
down there and drive up along that ridge, and there will be a place 
there where you can look out over the river. And if you sit there and 
wait an hour or so, you will see people crossing the river into the 
United States.
  So we did pull up there and met with a couple of police officers, and 
then the Border Patrol came along. While we were there waiting, we were 
able to watch on the other side of the river, where a team of two on 
the Mexico side inflated a relatively large inflatable raft, larger 
than I expected at least. About the size of a pool table would be my 
guess.
  They loaded a female, it turned out to be a pregnant female, into 
this raft. And you could watch as they just, late afternoon, roughly 4 
or 4:30, just brazenly started across the river and ran that raft right 
on over into the United States side where they go out of sight because 
of the brush. They came directly over across the river.
  The Border Patrol knew where they were. They would watch them. The 
city police could watch them.
  That illegal immigrant that came into America in that raft, was 
helped onto the shore by one of the two coyotes that were in the raft, 
and was handed the two bags of her personal items that she had with 
her. The coyote who got off on the shore got back in the raft, and they 
pulled away from the shore and went back to Mexico.
  The Border Patrol didn't get there in time to interdict the raft. 
They didn't seem to be as animated as I thought they would, which told 
me that it is a regular experience, not an irregular experience.
  They did interdict the illegal, who appeared to be pregnant, and 
likely came over to the United States to claim credible fear and 
asylum. And of course, if she has the baby here, that baby will be an 
American citizen. As soon as that baby is of age, that child can then 
start the reunification process to bring all of its family over here 
into the United States.
  That is what is going on on the border. And the officers that we were 
with while that happened said that they believe that the distraction 
that was created by bringing her over was a distraction that likely 
gave them an opportunity to smuggle a significant amount of illegal 
drugs across the river, probably upstream a ways, just out of sight of 
where we were and at a place where you can't drive.
  That was, I think, the most significant observation that we had, to 
see that brazen crossing of the river. They knew the Border Patrol was 
watching them. They knew the city police were watching them. They could 
see us up there, and that didn't deter them. They went across the river 
anyway and dropped her off and skedaddled back to the Mexican side.
  We even have video of them deflating the raft and folding it up and 
putting it in their vehicle. So surveillance would put a license number 
on that vehicle,

[[Page H6951]]

and it should be traceable, and it should be easy enough to identify 
the people that are doing this. But we don't have the level of 
cooperation across the river in Mexico, according to the questions that 
I asked. We have a border that is not completely open, but it is a 
long, long ways from being closed, Mr. Speaker.
  From there, we went on up the river and followed the border clear on 
into Laredo, where we took a tour from Customs and Border Protection in 
that very busy Laredo crossing there at Laredo, of the land freight, 
the semitrailers, as I took it, that are coming into the United States 
or leaving the United States. Forty-six percent of them in the 
southwest border come through Laredo. It is a huge crossing. The people 
there are professional. They use new technology to the extent that they 
can. There is just a lot of traffic.
  As I look at this overall policy, we also visited with or were able 
to observe the processing of people who are, let's say, interdicted and 
apprehended for illegal entry into the United States. Here is what it 
comes down to, Mr. Speaker, along these lines:
  The high number of unaccompanied alien children has been a problem 
that we have not encountered anywhere near to this magnitude before. 
There was a situation that about 10 to 11 percent used to be 
unaccompanied alien children. That number now has jumped up to 20 
percent. At times, it runs substantially more than that.
  When you have an unaccompanied alien child that comes into the United 
States, they are often smuggled across Mexico by a coyote.
  So think of this, Mr. Speaker. A girl or a boy in a family--and the 
boys are 80 percent, and the girls are 20 percent of the overall 
universe that are coming into the United States--that little boy or 
that little girl, the family will come up with a number that is in the 
area of $6,000 each. The coyote often lives in the same neighborhood. 
He will gather together a group as large as he thinks he can manage, 
and they will pay him his $6,000 per child, and then they start about 
transporting these unaccompanied alien children who are accompanied 
by--actually accompanied by--a coyote. So they are accompanied.

                              {time}  2100

  It is 2,500 miles, they tell me, from El Salvador up to Brownsville. 
It is about 2,000 miles of Mexico altogether and about 500 miles 
through the jungle of El Salvador into Mexico.
  So let's just say 2,000 miles. They will get on the train, called The 
Train of Death, The Beast, and ride on top of the train. They will 
perhaps get in the cars of the train, hang on to the sides of the 
train, and ride that train on up towards the United States.
  We have been advised here in this Congress by people who have been on 
the ground before I arrived there that as many as 100 percent of the 
girls that are being transported are given birth control because the 
anticipation that they will be subjected to rape is so high that they 
want to be as sure as they can that even though they think that she 
will be raped, they don't want her pregnant with the product of rape. 
So they will go to the local pharmacy, where it doesn't require a 
prescription in those countries, and buy birth control pills and start 
their daughter on this--their 12-year-old daughter, their 13-year-old 
daughter their 14-, 15-, 16- or 17-year-old daughter, put her on birth 
control pills and put her on the train, all the while having an 
understanding that there was a high risk that she would be raped.
  And the data that we got, the judgment that we got from the people 
that are taking care of these unaccompanied alien children, gave us 
these numbers: The lowest number they gave us on those that were raped 
on the way up was one-third. The highest number they gave was 70 
percent. In one place, they told us that it makes no difference, boys 
or girls; they are victimized in the same proportion. Boys are 
victimized in the same proportion as the girls. I am not convinced that 
that is a reliable response, but it was repeated several times back to 
us. But I am convinced that it is a reliable response on the girls.
  What kind of compassion is it, Mr. Speaker, that supports a policy, 
that is attracted by DACA, that would cause a family member--whether it 
is a mother and a father in, say, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras, 
or an aunt and uncle, a grandparent, to go down to the pharmacy and buy 
birth control pills and bring them back and start the prescription of 
the birth control pills to your 12-year-old daughter, your 12-year-old 
granddaughter, your 12-year-old niece--13, 14, 15--and then hand her 
over to a coyote who is, by definition, a human trafficker and put her 
out there in the custody of the coyote. And she ends up on a bus. She 
ends up on a truck. She ends up on a train. She ends up raped. And if 
she gets to the United States alive, traumatized, she has still got to 
get across the river. She still has to get into the United States. And 
maybe she goes across on a boat. Maybe she goes across on a jet ski. 
Maybe the water is low and she is able to get across. Right now, it is 
too deep in that area for that to happen.
  Swimming is a chance, but sometimes they drown. Sometimes they pick 
up sexually transmitted diseases. Sometimes they are killed along the 
way. Many, many, many times they are raped.
  This is the product of DACA. This is the product of a feckless policy 
that is also a lawless policy, a policy that violates the existing law 
that says, you shall place them into removal proceedings. But the 
President has ordered, you shall not do so. He has ordered ICE to 
violate the law. And the result of that is, an advertisement, a magnet 
that goes down into Central America, that reminds them, if you can get 
to the United States, you get to stay. And especially if you send your 
children up, and they are unaccompanied by a family member or an adult. 
But there are also a good number of children who come with adults.
  And they told us that often, it is a mother with one, two, or three 
children who has come all the way across Mexico through drug cartel 
land on the train of death, on the beast, or riding in some other form 
of transportation to arrive at the United States.
  So here is what happens: if they live, if they get here, even though 
they are traumatized and they may have disease--although I didn't find 
evidence of the magnitude of the incidence of the disease that I had 
been advised that there was--if they get here, and they are turning 
themselves over to the Border Patrol or surrendering to the first 
person they find--you might be walking along, watching birds along the 
Rio Grande river and have one or multiple illegals come out of the 
brush and surrender to you. They want to turn themselves over to the 
United States, especially the women and especially the children, but 
not so much the men.
  And then what happens is, they are picked up by the Border Patrol. 
They are taken down to the station. They are identified as much as they 
can. A lot of them do have birth certificates on them. A lot of them 
have a phone number of them of some family member, some friend, some 
destination they want to go to in America. They are processed. They are 
put into a holding cell, along with--sometimes it is a whole mix of 
different ages, men and women, nursing mothers, little kids. They might 
all be put in there together while they identify them, before they sort 
them. And then they will be sorted out in these holding cells with 
young girls there, older girls here, mothers with babies here, and 
mothers with babies and kids here, adult males here, young males here. 
That mix is there.
  Here is what this also comes to: If you look at the unaccompanied 
alien children that come into the United States, this number that is 
roughly 20 percent of the population of those that are interdicted now, 
here is the data from the Health and Human Services Web site, Office of 
Refugee Resettlement: it is 80 percent male. These are the 
unaccompanied alien children. So they are under the age of 18, up to 
and including 17. They are 80 percent male, and they are 83 percent 
older than 14, younger than 18. That means they are 15, 16, and 17 
years old, Mr. Speaker. That is a high percentage in that range.
  So here is how you calculate this. And that is, if you take 0.8, the 
80 percent for male, and you multiply it by the percentage that are 
older teenagers--that is 83 percent that are 15, 16, and 17--multiply 
those two together, and you get 64 percent, which is right in that two-
thirds category.
  We have already crossed the line of more than 57,000 unaccompanied 
alien

[[Page H6952]]

children who are interdicted down on the southern border, and that 
happened on June 15. So now we have got another month and a couple of 
weeks that have been racked up. We are easily over 60,000.
  But here is a number to think about, Mr. Speaker: 60,000 
unaccompanied alien children. And out of that 60,000, two-thirds of 
them are males of prime gang recruitment age. So that means that of the 
60,000, 40,000 are right there for MS-13 to recruit or right there for 
the Gulf Cartel to recruit, right there to be part of those who go into 
the crime syndicates, as opposed to those who might have had an 
opportunity and might have had a different approach if they were not 
exposed to this kind of life.
  You can go to any country in the world and identify the most 
dangerous demographic in any population and it is going to be young 
males. Young males cause the most trouble. They are the most violent. 
They commit the most crimes, whether they are sexual assault crimes or 
whether it is homicide, whether it is assault, whether it is theft, 
that comes out of that universe of young males.

  You could go to a place where I think there is a low crime rate--and 
I haven't looked this up. I just don't hear of anything coming out of 
Iceland. So you could go to Iceland and pick the Icelandic boys that 
are 15, 16, and 17 years old. They are going to be the prime age where 
they are committing crimes--that and older, the 18 to 25 to 30 to 32, 
and then it starts to taper off again.
  This is the universe that is coming out of Guatemala, El Salvador, 
and Honduras, the high gang recruitment age from some of the most 
violent countries in the world. As a matter of fact, the six most 
violent countries in the world with the highest homicide rates are 
south of Mexico. Eight of the top 10 countries with the highest 
homicide rates in the world are south of Mexico. We are bringing in 
young males to the tune of two-thirds of those that are coming across 
as unaccompanied alien children, two-thirds of them--40,000 of 60,000 
at least since the beginning of this fiscal year, 15, 16, and 17 years 
old.
  Now, there is one side of this that says, have compassion. They are 
only kids. There is another side that says, we should have some 
compassion for the American people. The American people are paying a 
price. They will pay a price in blood for these acts of this President. 
And the policy that they have is, they are just scattering them across 
the country. They will put them in a holding place until they can 
process them. Health and Human Services takes them into their custody. 
If they have a phone number in their pocket, they will call that phone 
number and say, can you send us a bus ticket? If you send us a bus 
ticket, we will put this person on the bus and send them to where you 
want them to go.
  There is not a very reliable method of identifying any background 
checks on the people that are--let's say they are the recipients of the 
unaccompanied alien children that are here, those 17-year-old potential 
gang recruits. They could be crack houses. They could be meth houses. 
They could be cat houses. They could be stash houses. It could be an 
MS-13 headquarters. They get delivered there. They get put on a bus to 
get sent there. Sometimes they get escorted there. Sometimes Customs 
and Border Protection puts them in a car and drives them across the 
State of Texas to another location.
  And when they do that, they have got two officers there. Sometimes 
those two officers are flying as few as one--they like to get a few 
more but as few as one of these individuals--to a place like Los 
Angeles from Laredo.
  Laredo to Los Angeles, two Federal officers escorting a 14-, 15-, 16-
, 17-year-old to Los Angeles. We are ending up with two round-trip 
plane tickets--often three round-trip plane tickets--and tie in a 
couple of hotel rooms to deliver and complete the crime.
  And what has happened is--I read a case that was decided in December 
of 2013. So, December of last year, Mr. Speaker, and it was a Federal 
judge who had to rule on a case of human trafficking, human smuggling 
prosecution. And what had happened was, there was a mother in Virginia, 
an illegal alien mother who had unlawfully entered the United States 
and was living illegally in Virginia, who had collected some money and 
sent that off to a coyote in El Salvador. It might have been Guatemala, 
but I believe it was El Salvador. And she paid the human smuggler to 
smuggle her 10-year-old daughter from El Salvador to Virginia.
  And so as the human smuggler, the coyote, smuggled the 10-year-old 
girl across the southern border to the United States, they were 
interdicted by the Border Patrol. And they have brought charges against 
the coyote, the human smuggler. And those were the Federal charges that 
the judge wrote his opinion on.
  As he wrote in this opinion, and I will summarize, he said: This is 
the fourth case I have had in as many weeks of ICE--this child was 
turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE had taken this 
child and delivered her to the illegal household of her biological 
mother in Virginia. That was the objective of the crime in the first 
place, to get her daughter illegally delivered into the illegal 
mother's household in the illegal household in Virginia. And as the 
coyote was interdicted with the 10-year-old at the border, and the 
Border Patrol caught them up and processed them over into ICE, and they 
filed charges for human trafficking, when the smuggler came across in 
front of the judge, he said: This is the fourth case that I have had in 
as many weeks, and it is appalling that the Federal Government--in this 
case, ICE--would complete the crime. Take the 10-year-old daughter and 
deliver her another 1,000 miles across America into the arms of her 
illegal mother, into an illegal household.
  Now, that sounds like there are four cases that are an anomaly, Mr. 
Speaker. But those four cases, I wish they were an anomaly. They are 
not. That is the standard today. And it is happening--not four times, 
not 40 times, not 400 times--thousands and thousands of times, this 
Federal Government is completing the crime of unlawful entry into the 
United States.
  So if you are under 18--or you say you are under 18--and you come 
into America with your birth certificate and a phone number of where 
you would like to be delivered, the process becomes, you get processed. 
If you are under 14, they don't even take your fingerprints. Neither do 
they take a photograph that is attached to your identification to 
identify you by. So we don't know who these kids are.

                              {time}  2115

  If they have a phone number, Border Patrol will process them. They 
try to get them turned over to Health and Human Services within 72 
hours, and when there is a backlog, it took longer. They were doing the 
best they could to comply with the law.
  Health and Human Services hired nongovernment contractors to house, 
process, deliver, and distribute, and so this unaccompanied alien child 
then--no fingerprints, no pictures, but a shower, food, and a fresh set 
of clothes, and they will send that unaccompanied alien child then 
anywhere in America that they request to go.
  Sometimes, they will get a bus ticket that is sent--that is paid for 
by the recipient household, and sometimes, they don't. They tell us 
they try not to have to buy those tickets out of your tax dollars, Mr. 
Speaker, but we know that is going on.
  It is a welcome mat--it is a welcoming party for people that come 
into America, and by the way, if they have a birth certificate, Border 
Patrol then will take their identifying documents, stick them in a 
file, and give them a piece of paper that is printed off on a Border 
Patrol printer, the size of this piece of typing paper and the same 
texture.
  It is a permission slip, or permiso, as they are calling it, that 
allows that illegal alien to stay in the United States, and they are 
supposed to promise that they are going to appear for a hearing.
  Well, we know that not very many of them do appear for hearings, but 
if they do, they have already been coached to say that they have a 
credible fear of being persecuted in their home country for whatever 
reason. They make the argument that they have this credible fear, and 
then they are allowed to stay in America, essentially, as asylees.
  This happens in a very, very high percentage of them, whether they 
are

[[Page H6953]]

unaccompanied alien children--that is the highest percent that gets to 
stay. Mothers with children is the next highest percent that gets to 
stay.
  When people are leaving the countries in Central America, Guatemala, 
El Salvador, and Honduras in massive numbers by the thousands and 
nobody shows up having been deported to those countries, then what 
happens is they understand that the promises are true, your odds of 
being deported are now down to this--now, it is well less than 1 
percent, and the promise of America will take care of you, America will 
give you your heat subsidy, your rent subsidy, your housing, your food 
stamps, your Obama phone, your ObamaCare, and now, the President wants 
to give you your lawyer.
  All of that is part of the promise. Until we send people back, they 
are going to keep coming. The common denominator message that we 
received over and over again, Mr. Speaker, was that unless you send 
them back, that is the only way you can send the message ``don't 
come,'' is for people to lose their $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 that 
they have invested in paying a coyote and being back in their home 
country, trying to save up some more money to come into America. That 
is a big chunk of money for people that are averaging less than $3,000 
a year, on average, for their income.
  We have a government policy that is a complete mess and a calamity. I 
believe that each of the law enforcement there are doing the job as 
best they can, and the rules of engagement prevent them from having a 
cohesive strategy that can actually secure the border.
  We need to build a fence and a wall and a fence on the southern 
border to keep them on the other side of it, so they can't get in, and 
we need to call upon the border State Governors, in particular the 
Governor of Texas, to continue to do what he is doing--that is call up 
forces to secure the border, that is call up his National Guard--the 
Texas National Guard--to secure the border.
  This Congress has an obligation to pass a resolution that calls upon 
the border State Governors to call up their National Guard to 
circumvent the Commander in Chief of the United States--
constitutionally, I might add. It is the only way to secure the border. 
This President will not. He will not secure the border. The border 
State Governors can do this, I believe they will do this, and Congress 
has an obligation to fund them.
  So I put a message out, Mr. Speaker, that we first need to pass a 
resolution in this Congress, and the resolution needs to say the 
President's DACA language, coupled with mostly the excuse of the 2008 
legislation, his refusal to enforce immigration law, and his 
advertisement that we are not going to enforce the law that has 
penetrated deeply into Mexico and Central America has got to stop. The 
President has to reverse it. He has to start enforcing the law. That is 
job one.
  The second one is--it is not going to happen, I don't believe he is 
going to do it, I don't think it is in his head or his heart, he has 
got another agenda, and so we call upon the border State Governors to 
call up their National Guard and enforce the border and commit the 
House at least to funding the border State Governors, so they can keep 
them on the line, and they can go to the other States for 
reinforcements, especially with sympathetic Governors.
  Pass the little fix of the 2008 law, set it as a stand-alone bill, 
and send it over to the Senate because they are hiding behind it now 
and using that as an excuse not to enforce the law.
  Another one, do not let these illegal aliens go north of the border 
any more than 50 miles. Keep them contained. Put them in housing that, 
if it is good enough for the United States military, it is good enough 
for those who have come into the United States illegally--yes, even if 
it is canvas, even if it is a tent city, we cannot be rewarding them 
with air-conditioned buildings and opulent digs scattered across the 
countryside.
  Mr. Speaker, there are solutions to this. They are in the hands of 
the President. We need to call upon him to enforce the law.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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