[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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