[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 7, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H1018-H1019]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            OUR CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. DeSantis) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, the Founding Fathers believed that our 
constitutional system of checks and balances and separation of powers 
were the people's primary protection for their liberty, and they saw 
the usurpation of authority by a single branch to be dangerous to the 
constitutional system.

[[Page H1019]]

  Now, there has been a focus this weekend on Presidential tweets 
regarding the courts, and I think this deserves attention. My view is 
that the President's broadsides against the courts will likely hurt the 
government's case on appeal, and were, therefore, counterproductive. I 
would advise to focus on substance rather than on general broadsides.
  But I think it is also important to point out and to criticize the 
substance of the decision that was made by the Federal court in Seattle 
because that decision represented a departure from the judicial role. 
The judge in that case exercised his political will, not his legal 
judgment, which is the antithesis of how Alexander Hamilton described 
the proper role of the courts in the Federalist Papers.
  The judge there--if you read the opinion, it is a cursory opinion--
didn't even attempt to wrestle with the law at issue in the President's 
executive actions on immigration. The reason why that is important is 
because the law is very, very clear.
  This Congress has enacted a statute, section 1182(f) of the 
immigration laws that says that the President has the authority to 
suspend entry of foreign nationals when the President finds that entry 
would be detrimental to the interests of the U.S. And so that is what 
was cited. That provision of the law has not been questioned in over 60 
years.
  The court in Seattle, though, questioned effectively the wisdom of 
the executive order, not really the legality. And there was a part of 
the oral argument before the judge issued his temporary retraining 
order where he said that there hasn't been any terrorism from any 
foreign national from any of the seven countries that were enumerated 
from the visa suspension. It is Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, 
Sudan. And he said confidently that that had not happened.
  Well, that is not true. If you look at just recently, you had the 
attacker in St. Cloud, Minnesota, September 2016, who was a Somali 
refugee. You have the Ohio State attacker. That was just 2\1/2\ months 
ago. He was running people over on campus and wielding a butcher knife 
going after people. He was a refugee from Somalia.
  You had the two Iraqi refugees arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky. 
They came as refugees, even though they had been active in fighting and 
in killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq.
  You also have the case, the Federal case in Houston last year with 
the conviction of Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan. He came as a refugee from 
Iraq and did get a green card, but he was convicted of material support 
to ISIS for trying to bomb the shopping malls in Houston, Texas.
  So you have this judge who is ignoring the law, ignoring what 
Congress has enacted, ignoring the President's authority, substituting 
his own policy judgment, and he is not even right on the facts; doesn't 
even really know what he is talking about.
  Here's the thing, also. Whether there have been attacks or arrests 
from these countries really is not even relevant to the law at stake. I 
mean, Bush could have suspended immigration from Saudi Arabia and Egypt 
in January 2001. People would have been like: Why are you doing that? 
What's going on?

  Well, eventually, obviously you had foreign nationals from that 
country commit the 9/11 attacks.
  The key is, debate the wisdom of the President's policies. That is 
totally fine, and people are going to have their views on it. But we 
should not sit here and act like it is normal for a judge to exercise 
authority to overrule the Congress and the President, when the law is 
clear, and when you are dealing with an area, in terms of the entry of 
foreign nationals, that really centers on the national security 
interests that both the Congress and the President possess.
  So our constitutional system requires that the branches exercise the 
authority properly delegated to them. When the branch, any branch--
Congress, the President, or the courts--departs from their proper 
roles, that is something that we should acknowledge, and that is 
something that we should be concerned with.
  I have no confidence that the Ninth Circuit is going to reverse it, 
but I do think that this judge overstepped the judicial role and was, 
effectively, legislating from the bench. That, ultimately, is not good 
for the constitutional system and, by extension, the people's 
liberties.

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