[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 104 (Thursday, June 21, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5495-H5502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gallagher). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized 
here on the floor of the House of Representatives and take up a topic 
that I have been hearing about here for some time.
  It seems as though the Nation is wrapped up in an immigration 
discussion again. We seem to peak out on our peak concern of 
immigration issues a couple of times a decade, and a lot of the same 
topics are debated over and over again.
  I have been listening to the minority here for some time, a full 
hour, I believe, and a number of things come to mind that don't seem to 
match up the same from my perspective as theirs, and one of them is, 
you know, the discussion about separating families.
  I have made multiple, multiple trips down to the border. I have 
traveled most of the miles of the border. I can't say definitively that 
I have traveled them all--I don't know if anyone has--but I have flown 
a lot of it, driven a lot of it, walked a fair amount of it, ridden 
with the Border Patrol sometimes for days on end, and sat down at night 
and listened in the darkness at some of the most dangerous crossings 
there are as illegal aliens come through the fence and over the border.
  I have been there as part of the arrests of the drug smuggling that 
comes through our border. I have seen MS-13 be among those that we 
arrested for smuggling drugs into the United States of America.
  I have watched as we paroled into the United States, I will say, the 
casualties from the bar fights on the Mexican side of the border and 
the knifings that have taken place there, and I have visited some of 
those folks in the hospital.
  I have met and discussed with the hospital officials the cost to them 
for funding the medical care for people who are not only not Americans, 
they are not American citizens. They are not American green card 
holders. They aren't even illegal aliens in America. They are paroled 
into America for medical care out of the compassion and the sympathy of 
our hearts.
  So to hear the discussion about how cruel we are, how mean we are, 
how

[[Page H5496]]

heartless we are, some of these phrases--I wrote a couple of them down, 
Mr. Speaker. Apparently, I did so on a different piece of paper.
  However, here is one, ``tore his daughter out of his arms,'' speaking 
of a father and a daughter. We just heard that a little bit ago, Mr. 
Speaker.
  ``Tore his daughter out of his arms''; ``babies separated from their 
parents, some at 8 months, some at 11 months''; ``it is a disaster''; 
``it is cruel''; it is dangerous''; ``this is child abuse''--these are 
the things that I am listening to.
  Well, I took the trouble to go and to visit those locations, and I am 
thinking in particular of McAllen, Texas, in the Brownsville area, 
where we have multiple locations of transfer homes for these children. 
Most of them are unaccompanied alien children who have come into 
America on their own, and they are older than they are described to be, 
and some of them are older than they say they are.
  In fact, I see some of these juveniles in the juvenile cell at the 
Border Patrol, and those folks that are under 18, presumably, with a 
little gray in their beard. That is a little bit of a giveaway. You 
would think that they might at least shave so that doesn't show up. But 
they are not the way they are characterized to be.
  As I stand on the border and go into these locations, the first one, 
I think, of focus and attention would be going into the locations where 
the unaccompanied alien children are housed. One of the first locations 
that they set up when the largest flood came into the United States 
about 3 years ago was a huge warehouse in McAllen, Texas.
  In that huge warehouse, they moved in there and they went to work. In 
a matter of 17 days, Mr. Speaker, they cleaned everything out of that 
warehouse, squared it away, washed it down, scrubbed it down, wired it, 
and put in a full air-conditioning system along with chain link 
barriers in there that set it off in kind of like partitions for large 
rooms.
  You have to do that, because when you have several hundred or even 
several thousand youth that you have to take care of, you can't leave 
the boys and the girls together. You have got to separate them to a 
degree by age, and they did that.
  So they had them managed in that fashion, the younger boys in this 
area, little bit older boys in this area, the more older boys in this 
area, and the same with the girls; keep the boys and the girls 
separated except for certain activities such as the outdoor recreation 
that they had.
  So people say, well, that is cruel, because they saw--this all got 
started because we saw a picture on the internet of a little boy 
standing behind a chain link fence, and it was advertised that that 
little boy, Mr. Speaker, was in a cage, that we had been putting these 
unaccompanied alien children in cages. Well, no. It was a huge 
warehouse, an air-conditioned warehouse.
  You can stand any child in a schoolyard--that is the same kind of 
fence that is in the schools all over America, all over the world so 
far as I know, chain link fencing. You could stand a little boy or a 
little girl behind that chain link fencing in the corner and take a 
picture of them and contend that they were in a cage.
  It is not a cage. It was a large divided area. And some of those 
areas were large enough that they were playing soccer in them.
  So when these kids come in, they get a shower. They get cleaned up. 
They get medical care. They get a medical examination to see if they 
are carrying any disease, if they have any injuries, if they need any 
medical treatment of any kind, and they will square them away with any 
medical treatment that they need. They get a fresh change of clothes.
  When they go in, they get three squares a day. They get a mattress to 
sleep on that is about three or four times more comfortable than a 
sleeping bag. It is not a fancy four-poster bed, but it is a warm, 
comfortable place to sleep. They get their own blankets, their own 
coverage that way. And they are managed all the time. They have the 
things that they need.

  Somebody said to me: Well, but they only get 2 hours of fresh air a 
day.
  This is hot. It is hot. It is in Texas. It is hot in south Texas. 
They are playing soccer indoors in air-conditioning.
  My kids didn't ever get to do that. My grandkids don't get to do 
that. I never got to do that. But that is what is going on down there.
  They are not abused and they are not short of the things that they 
need to be taken care of. And, yes, there are counselors there to talk 
with them.
  And by the way, the most recent trip was last October. It was a 
bipartisan trip. I have heard one of the Members who was on that trip 
from the other party complaining about how badly we were treating these 
kids, but it wasn't her concern when we were down there asking 
questions of the people who were taking care of them.
  That Member did ask a lot of questions, was concerned about their 
care, but not alarmed because these children didn't have their mother 
or their father with them. That wasn't an issue that was raised at all.
  So all of a sudden it becomes the subject du jour that they ``tore 
his daughter out of his arms.'' Well, there is a way to characterize 
that, isn't it? I don't think that actually fits at all. I think if you 
had the video, you couldn't characterize it that way.
  But here is what does tear a baby from its mother, and it is called 
abortion. If you want to really see, Mr. Speaker, how bad that is--
nobody has got a video of what goes on in the abortion mill because it 
is too ghastly. But if a baby is ever torn from its mother, it is 
through abortion, and it doesn't seem to bother the folks on the other 
side of the aisle. They will rail away for days on end about 2,000 
juveniles who were separated from their parents because--well, usually 
a parent, because the parent committed a crime.
  I would submit there are more American citizens who are separated 
from their children because those American citizens committed crime on 
a daily basis than there are illegal alien mothers or fathers who are 
separated from their illegal alien children, because when they commit a 
crime, that is what happens.
  So we have tens of thousands of American citizens in prison today who 
are separated from their sons and daughters. Usually it is the dads, 
not as often the moms, but that doesn't seem to bother the left either, 
how many of these criminal American citizens are separated, but it does 
bother them, apparently, because there is political hay to be made over 
making a big issue out of this.
  The people taking care of these children down here are compassionate. 
They are giving gentle, loving care. We are hiring coaches to play 
soccer with them in the air-conditioned building, and yet they are 
being characterized as a cage.
  Well, what shall I say? One of the largest warehouses I have seen 
anywhere is not a cage, but they do have dividers in there that are 
made out of chain link, the same thing that is used in the playgrounds, 
the fences around the playgrounds, Mr. Speaker.
  So I think there is a lot of hyperventilation going on here and very 
little substance, but the President addressed this with an executive 
order.
  And by the way, I support the policy change that he brought forth 
with his executive order, but it is not enough to satisfy the left. 
They will never be satisfied.
  I have long said that if I had a magic wand--let's see if I have got 
one here in my pocket, a magic wand--and I would say to the left, ``You 
have got all the rest of the year to come up with a list of all of the 
things that you want and you can write these policy changes down and 
agree on them; and I don't care how long that list is, it can be 
infinity minus one, all of the things you have, and when the ball drops 
at Times Square in New York for the new year, I will wave the magic 
wand and you can have all the policy changes that you plotted up from 
today till December 31 at midnight,'' and if we made that deal and I 
agreed to all of that and this wand actually were magic, and when the 
ball dropped at Times Square and the new year started, I would say, 
``Presto, here you go; now you have got all the things you want. We 
have solved all of the problems''--well, that would probably include 
the impeachment of Donald Trump, so I would exempt that one from the 
list, Mr. Speaker, but all the rest of them, here is what would happen: 
They would stay up all night the rest of the night whining about being 
cheated because we didn't give them enough time to come

[[Page H5497]]

up with the things they wanted to do to our country, and they would 
never be satisfied.
  And if I required that they had to show us what they wanted America 
to look like once they had their globalist utopia established, they 
wouldn't be able to paint it, because they can't see into the future. 
All they want to do is tear down what is and continue to tear down what 
is rather than build up what is best for us. That means they are 
turning their back on the foundations laid down by our Founding 
Fathers, turning their back on constitutional issues, Mr. Speaker, 
turning their back and denying the very human nature components of 
this.
  And, you know, when I see that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Harry 
Reid, Chuck Schumer, all of them have spoken for at least a measure of 
border security, build a wall, we can't be a sovereign nation if we 
don't secure our borders, all of those folks have spoken in that way 20 
years ago, but not anymore--not anymore because they have decided, as a 
party, that they have an advantage for pouring illegal aliens into the 
United States of America because it picks up for them.
  These illegal aliens are counted in the Census. If you noticed the 
hyperventilation, Mr. Speaker, that came out when the administration 
announced that they were going to count citizens separately in the 
Census, and, oh, my gosh, you would have thought that the world had 
come to an end as far as the Democrats were concerned, Mr. Speaker, 
because they are afraid that it will suppress the count of human 
beings. They believe that illegal aliens deserve to be represented in 
the United States Congress.
  And by the way, they are, they are represented in the United States 
Congress. We have now held a couple of hearings on this. I held a 
hearing in the Constitution Committee that I chair just a few weeks 
ago. But I recall testimony from about 10 or 12 years ago that came 
from Steve Camarata, Dr. Steve Camarata of the Center for Immigration 
Studies, who testified that if we counted citizens for redistricting 
purposes rather than people, so then people would include legal and 
illegal immigrants, but noncitizens, if we only counted citizens and 
redistricted accordingly, then what we would have would be somewhere 
between 8 and 11--this is his old testimony--8 and 11 congressional 
districts that would move out of States like Florida, Texas, and 
California into States like Utah, Iowa would pick a seat back up again, 
and Indiana. Those States come to mind in that fashion.

                              {time}  2045

  But as it is, illegal aliens are counted alongside citizens. The 
congressional seats here are different because we are not counting 
citizens for reapportionment purposes; we are counting all people.
  So why is it that they want to invite illegals into their cities like 
Los Angeles, like maybe Maxine Waters' district? Why do they want to 
protect them? It gives them political power. And it takes me a lot more 
votes to be elected or reelected in my district, because I have a low 
percentage of illegal aliens. And it takes a lot fewer votes if you are 
in a district with a high percentage, presuming that the illegal aliens 
are not voting. And they are voting in increasing numbers, and that has 
been proven, too.
  So we have people that have a political gain that comes out of 
promoting illegal immigration. We are hearing it come out of the mouths 
of the people on the left time after time after time, to make a 
political issue out of this.
  The most successful institutions over the last two centuries, Mr. 
Speaker, are the nation-states, the nation-states. You have to be a 
sovereign nation-state, and that requires a border. You have to control 
who comes and who goes outside of that border or inside of that border. 
That is what nations do.
  And inside the nation-state, you have to have the rule of law. That 
law also covers who comes and who goes. Our Founding Fathers understood 
this. They wrote it into our Constitution. And they established that 
the Congress establishes immigration policy, because they knew they 
were establishing a nation-state.
  The nation-states had not been established for that long or that 
successfully in the time that our Founding Fathers laid down the 
foundation for America, but they had the vision on how best to build a 
country. They wrote some of it in the Declaration and the rest of it in 
the Constitution.
  Here we are, well past two centuries of terrific success, the 
unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. We have created a larger 
economy, a stronger military, a more powerful culture, more influential 
around the world than any country has ever seen, and it is built upon 
the pillars of American exceptionalism. Those pillars are described as 
Ronald Reagan described often for us: The shining city on the hill.
  Mr. Speaker, I can see that shining city on the hill in my mind's 
eye, painted by President Reagan, whom I revered. But I would argue 
that really isn't a shining city on the hill. I would rather envision 
this shining city as a shining city built upon the pillars of American 
exceptionalism. Those pillars of American exceptionalism, the perimeter 
pillars around the outside edge with a central pillar in the middle 
that holds it all together, but around the outside edge would be a 
pillar for freedom of speech, a pillar for freedom of religion, a 
pillar for freedom of assembly, a pillar for freedom of the press. That 
is just the First Amendment. Another pillar for Second Amendment 
rights, the right to keep and bear arms so that we can protect all of 
our other rights. And on up the line, a pillar for property rights and 
the Fifth Amendment; nor shall private property be taken for public use 
without just compensation. Another pillar for being tried by a jury of 
our peers, no double jeopardy, and on around the line.
  A few other pillars along the way that aren't in the Bill of Rights, 
and another one would be free enterprise capitalism as our economic 
system that has been a foundation for the success of America. And the 
property rights not only that I have quoted in the Fifth Amendment, but 
also intellectual property rights, so that creators have a right to the 
proceeds of their work.
  Then, as I define these pillars around the outside, the perimeter 
pillars in this shining city on the pillars of American exceptionalism, 
I would add to that, as I said, free enterprise capitalism, the dynamic 
economy that we have, and Judeo-Christian values that are core in the 
foundation. They are the founding of our country. They are the core of 
the moral foundation that we are, as a people. They are part of our 
religion, and they are part of our culture. This Nation would collapse 
if we ever lost them. And when they are weakened, America goes wobbly.
  But all of these pillars that I have described are perimeter pillars. 
The central pillar of American exceptionalism, the one that we cannot 
and dare not sacrifice, is the rule of law. That is the central pillar 
that sits in the middle that anchors everything else that it sets upon 
and ties together.
  What is happening here in this Congress, this day and these days, is 
a relentless effort that is eroding this essential pillar of American 
exceptionalism called the rule of law.
  Whenever a Member gets up and argues that we should grant amnesty to 
illegal aliens because it makes our hearts feel good, what we are doing 
is desecrating these pillars of American exceptionalism and chiseling 
away on them and eroding them. Our job needs to be to refurbish the 
pillars of American exceptionalism, not erode them.
  So to go back into some of these topics that are being addressed by 
people on the other side of the aisle and people on this side of the 
aisle, they continually say that it is too dangerous in these countries 
in Central America, so we need to get these young people out of 
countries like, let's say, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia, 
Belize, Guatemala, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, 
Brazil. Get people out of there. Get young people out of there, because 
it is too dangerous for them. They might be killed by the gangs down 
there.
  I recall sitting in a Judiciary Committee meeting when John Conyers 
was the ranking member from Detroit, and they were making that 
argument, that it is too dangerous in Central America for these young 
people, these, let's say, 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds, especially 
boys, to get them out of there and bring them into America.

[[Page H5498]]

  Well, where do they put them? Right back into the inner city here, in 
a center of an ethnic enclave that is full of gangs.
  So I said, if you think it is too dangerous for those children in 
Guatemala, that they should go to America, you had better not take them 
to Detroit, because it is more dangerous in Detroit than it is in 
Guatemala. It is more dangerous in Baltimore than it is in Honduras. It 
is more dangerous sometimes in Washington, D.C. It is more dangerous in 
New Orleans. It is more dangerous in St. Louis, especially East St. 
Louis, than it is in any of these countries down here that I have just 
mentioned.
  But, Mr. Speaker, these countries that I mentioned, and I am going to 
go through it in a little more detail, these are the top 10 most 
violent countries in the world. There is a website called 
worldlifeexpectancy.com, and I have followed it for a decade or so.
  So these are the most current numbers, Mr. Speaker, and I think it is 
important for the body to understand what is going on here. We are 
listening to people advocate for bringing prime gang-age young men, 
especially, out of these countries into America. They are coming from 
the most violent countries in the world, some of them going into the 
most violent cities in America. We know the countryside is safer than 
the cities, statistically at least.
  So here are some numbers. The most violent country in the world right 
now, the one where you can have a greater expectancy of dying a violent 
death, is Honduras. Honduras has a 94.47 violent deaths per 100,000 
rate, according to worldlifeexpectancy.com. That is Honduras.
  Then El Salvador, Number two, the second most violent country in the 
world: 62.82 violent deaths per 100,000 reported. There have been times 
when El Salvador was so bad that they didn't give you a number. At 
least there is a number here. I don't know that I trust it, but we know 
it is very high.
  Venezuela: 50.5 violent deaths per 100,000. That is number 3.
  Number 4, it is the only one out of the top 10 that is not south of 
the Rio Grande, by the way: Zimbabwe, 47.41.
  Now we are back to our familiar Western Hemisphere again, south of 
the Rio Grande: Colombia, 47 violent deaths per 100,000; Belize, 41.54 
violent deaths per 100,000; Guatemala, their numbers have been a lot 
higher. They seem to be a little lower now, but they are still seventh 
highest in violent death rate in the world: 39.85 violent deaths per 
100,000.
  Then: Jamaica, 34.79; Trinidad and Tobago, 31.74; and number 10, 
Dominican Republic comes in at 31.18 violent deaths per 100,000.
  Now you think, okay, what does this mean proportionally?
  A few more along the way that I have here. That is Dominican 
Republic. Then Brazil, 29.50.
  So what this tells you is nine of the top 10 most violent countries 
in the world are south of the Rio Grande River, and 10 of the top 11 
most violent countries in the world are south of the Rio Grande.
  But one of them is not Mexico. Mexico doesn't come up on this until 
you get to number 19, and it is easy to remember. Mexico is the 19th 
most violent country in the world, and they have 19 violent deaths per 
100,000.
  So if we wanted to enhance violence in America, if we wanted more 
violence instead of less, one of the things that you would do is you 
could go look at the most violent countries in the world, try to pick 
the most violent demographics out of there, young men, and bring them 
into America if you wanted to ensure that there would be more crime in 
America.
  That is an irrefutable equation. If you go to Honduras and you load 
up several thousand young men that are 15-, 16-, 17-, 18-, 19-, and 20-
years-old, and you bring them in and you drop them into the inner city 
in Detroit or Baltimore or East St. Louis or Los Angeles, I mean, what 
do you expect is going to happen, Mr. Speaker? Are there going to be 
more murders there, or are there going to be less?
  I don't think it is any question at all. There will be more murders 
because of this. There will be more rapes. There will be more assaults. 
There will be more thefts. There will be more violent crime of all 
kinds. There will be more drugs dealt.
  By the way, some of them, in fact a lot of them, become or are 
already MS-13. And MS-13, are they sending people into America to 
expand their drug reach? We know, Mr. Speaker, that they are doing 
that. And why? Well, they are perpetrating violence. They are shaking 
down the neighborhoods. They are extracting the mordida payments out of 
the people around them and threatening the people around them. We know 
this.
  They are killing Americans. I met with some of the families out of 
New York. One in particular had their daughter killed, just clubbed to 
death. One had been killed with a machete. And this is MS-13.
  But the drug gangs in this country--we had the Director of the Drug 
Enforcement Agency, Mr. Patterson, before the Judiciary Committee here 
about a month ago, as I recall, and I asked him a few questions, Mr. 
Speaker, and it was like this:

  What percentage of the illegal drugs consumed in America come from or 
through Mexico? The answer that he agreed to was 80 to 90 percent of 
the illegal drugs consumed in America come from or through Mexico.
  They are not all produced in Mexico. Some of those drugs, a lot of 
them, are smuggled out of China. Then they process the drugs there, and 
they smuggle them into the United States, because that is the most 
expeditious route.
  Now, it is our responsibility, here in the United States, because we 
have the demand for illegal drugs. But that is part of it. We need to 
address it here on the demand side, but we also have to address it on 
the interdiction side, and we need to address it with regard to Mexico 
and points south that are part of this equation that is producing and 
pushing these drugs up into America, particularly fentanyl, the highly, 
highly dangerous drug that coming in contact with that one time can 
kill you, and a very small dose of it can do that.
  But we have a tremendous number of people coming out of the most 
violent countries in the world being brought into America, and we are 
being told we should have sympathy for that. Those are the boys I am 
talking about.
  I counted the numbers down there and looked at the data some time 
back of the unaccompanied alien children coming into America: 81 
percent young males, most of them in that 14- to 16-, 17-year-old age 
group. But they were 81 percent males then.
  If you look at the pictures, riding the Beast, that train of death, 
you might see 30 or 40 young men there and one or two girls or young 
women there. But other information that I picked up in traveling around 
through Central America and down in McAllen and talking to the kids in 
the transfer centers, I learned this, Mr. Speaker, that it went from 
seven different sources. These are supervisory sources that were 
working with these kids.
  They insisted that 100 percent of the girls got birth control before 
they were sent from home on up across into the United States. Say the 
distance of that is, El Salvador to McAllen, 1,500 miles. McAllen to 
Minnesota another 1,500 miles, just to put it in proportion.

                              {time}  2100

  They would say: No, 100 percent of the girls get birth control pills. 
They put them on the pill. They give them plan B, the morning after 
part of it, and they expect that they will be raped. And the consistent 
message from those same seven different independent sources that didn't 
index with each other, that 75 percent--75 percent--of the girls who 
are traveling across Mexico into the United States are raped, 75 
percent.
  Now, it is a ghastly thought to think that anybody would take their 
daughter or granddaughter and give them birth control pills and send 
them on a journey like that believing that somehow they would send them 
into America, knowing they were going to be raped before they got here 
as they came across Mexico. That is a piece of this equation that 
doesn't get stated very often, Mr. Speaker, and that is as close to 
known facts as we can get. That is field research done by this Member 
and another Member of Congress, and they are the right kind of 
witnesses.
  So I have described the violence. I have described the drugs. I have 
described the types of victims that we have, 50,000 of them a month for 
the last 3 months in America.

[[Page H5499]]

  That turns out to be 600,000 illegals coming into America that we 
would be interdicting, not counting those that get past us that we 
don't see; 600,000 will be the target number, I guess I will say, the 
predicted number for the calendar year of 2018.
  In addition to this, as we talked about, Mr. Speaker, ripping 
children from their father's arms or from their mother's arms, and I 
said what really does that is abortion, ripping a child from her mother 
in that fashion.
  We bring into this country between 1 and 1.2 million legal immigrants 
each year. Let's just round that to a million, Mr. Speaker, a simple 
number. Well, that happens to be identical to the number of abortions 
in America each year: 1 million.
  So, since 1973 and Roe v. Wade, there have been 60 million babies 
aborted in this country, and about the same number of legal immigrants 
that have come into America.
  It just came into my head a couple days ago as I was listening to 
someone speak, Mr. Speaker, that, for every time a legal immigrant 
comes into America, we abort an American baby here. And that baby goes, 
I guess I could say as gently, into the disposal at Planned Parenthood. 
That baby is destroyed for every individual that comes into America 
legally.
  And 600,000 illegals coming into America that we have to adjudicate, 
and who knows how many come in that we aren't catching, that we are not 
adjudicating.
  These American babies, these 60 million American babies are a hole in 
the demographics of America, and they are a heavy weight on the guilty 
conscience of a country--60 million babies.
  And when you do the back-of-the-envelope calculation to find out what 
about those future mothers who were aborted, what about those future 
fathers who were aborted, what would they have done? How many children 
would they have had starting in 1973?
  I did that calculation, and it is only an estimate, and I wouldn't 
say that there isn't a better way to come up with it, but what I came 
to was another number. These 60 million babies that have been aborted, 
roughly 30 million of them are girls. And of those 30 million girls, 
some of them would have had babies by now.
  As you do the calculation on what the birth rate was then for those 
earlier years, you are looking at perhaps as many as another 60 million 
babies would have been born, except their mothers and presumably their 
fathers were aborted, too.
  So someplace 60 million aborted, 60 million babies not born because 
their mothers were aborted. Somewhere around 100 million to 120 million 
Americans are missing as a result of abortion.
  And we are wrapped around the axle because of 2,000 children who were 
temporarily separated from their parents because their parents 
committed the crime, at least the crime of unlawful entry into the 
United States of America, if not other crimes like document fraud and 
whatnot.
  But all of the criminals who are put into prison who are American 
citizens are separated from their children, and I am listening to the 
angst over here that I think is unnecessary hyperventilation, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I think of a mother who was separated from her daughter and how I 
came to learn that. About, roughly, a decade ago, a little more than a 
decade ago, I guess, I went over to Iraq to visit our troops over 
there, and I flew into Kuwait City, the airstrip there.
  I was met by a young National Guard captain. It was the middle of the 
night, about 1, 1:30 in the morning, and she met me and escorted me 
over to Camp Arifjan, which was where the 1168th Transportation Unit 
was based as they were hauling equipment and manpower into Baghdad over 
land from there, a fairly dangerous run.
  As the captain took me to visit the troops--and I spoke to a good-
size group of the troops. But then afterwards, she had six of her 
troops who had personal issues that they couldn't solve while they were 
deployed in Iraq, and I sat town with each of those troops 
individually, took notes, and put together a bit of a plan of action of 
what I could do to try to help.
  I did follow through and did what I could do. I think I helped some 
of them. I don't know that I solved it all. She said I did, but I 
didn't think so, Mr. Speaker.
  In any case, I learned this young captain had a 4-year-old daughter 
who was home, and this young captain was separated from her daughter at 
the age of 4. So I promised, since the girl was being taken care of by 
her father and the message was that things were okay at home, I 
promised I would go check on her daughter because sometimes that Mr. 
Mom stuff doesn't get confessed over the email when Mom is deployed in 
the war zone.
  So when I got back to the States, I traveled back to Iowa and set up 
an appointment and went down to visit that home. And there is this 
little 4-year-old girl, and she had long blonde hair with reddish 
highlights in it, stovepipe curls, went all the way down to her waist 
in the back, Mr. Speaker.

  I sat there and talked to her father. I talked to this 4-year-old 
girl, and she had matching dimples, the cutest thing, right out of 
Norman Rockwell, and an energy, sparkle in her eye, a smile on her 
face, the laughter in her voice.
  Kids are the source of all joy, by the way.
  I remember her trucking around the living room and out to the kitchen 
and running around and full of energy, but also full of love. And it 
broke my heart to see that little 4-year-old girl and think about her 
mother being deployed in a war zone, missing out on 13 months of some 
of the most joyful time you can have raising a child.
  That child was separated from her mother, and that child's mother's 
name is, today, Senator Joni Ernst, and her daughter is Libby Lou, who 
is now going to the Military Academy.
  But we have people who are separated from their families on a 
consistent basis. Everybody who is deployed who has children is 
separated from those children for long periods of time, a lot longer 
than they are separated from their children when they sneak into 
America and break our laws.
  I honor them. I respect them. I revere them. That has touched my 
heart for all these years, having seen that, and I have never heard a 
word of complaint out of either the mother or the daughter or the dad, 
for that matter, Mr. Speaker.
  So I want to remind the body that this separation is not unique to 
criminal aliens. It is just that it seems that our sympathy is a bit 
misplaced when we should be thinking about the separation and thankful 
that they are willing to endure it, the separation that takes place 
from our Army, our Navy, our airmen, and our marines, and all of those 
who are serving and protecting our God-given liberty and what that 
means to our country.
  So I think of another time that there was a severe personal problem 
of a young man who was serving over in the middle of Iraq at Camp 
Victory. I won't describe that personal problem, Mr. Speaker, but I 
will just say that it broke my heart to know what was going on also in 
his personal life.
  As I went over to visit him and his unit and present a flag to them 
that had been flown over the Capitol in his unit's honor, I mentioned 
to him how difficult it must be. He looked me in the eye with a stoic, 
patriotic look and he said: It is manageable, sir.
  Well, he served his duty and served his time and he served our 
country nobly and honorably and demonstrated that it was manageable.
  This difficulty on the southern border is manageable, too, but we 
have high principles that we must restore. And the highest principle we 
must restore is respect for the rule of law.
  When Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty Act in 1986, I watched this 
debate take place here in the House and in the Senate. And, no, I 
didn't have C-SPAN then. I watched the text of it and I read the 
stories on it, and I listened to the newspaper stories as they went on.
  And when it passed the House and passed the Senate, the Amnesty Act 
of 1986 that was supposed to be for a million people, there was 
supposed to never be another amnesty again so long as this country 
should live, and they would enforce the law and secure the border at 
every point since that time. But I didn't believe it, of course, and I 
was right not to believe it.
  When the bill got to President Reagan's desk, President Reagan signed 
the bill with the advice of most, if not all, of his Cabinet. And most, 
if not all,

[[Page H5500]]

of those who advised him to sign it have regretted that advice because 
they saw that it was a big mistake. And Ronald Reagan regretted that 
signature on the 1986 Amnesty Act as well.
  But we are here dealing with the problems created by that Amnesty Act 
because we didn't restore the respect for the rule of law. The right 
thing to do in 1986 would have been to continue the kind of enforcement 
that Dwight Eisenhower was utilizing during his terms of office.
  Here is some of the data that I happen to have in my pocket, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Dwight Eisenhower mounted a border enforcement program in 1954. In 
1954, 1,074,277 illegal aliens were verified to voluntarily return to 
their home country. 1,074,277 voluntary returns in 1954 alone, that 
many years ago before the problem was as big as it is today.
  Throughout the years of the Eisenhower administration, they managed 
to deport 250,000 each year, or more. And they managed to do that, Mr. 
Speaker, with only 800 Border Patrol agents--800 agents. Today, we have 
21,000 Border Patrol agents. They had 800.
  I divided that out to see what the ratio is.
  For every Border Patrol Agent that Dwight Eisenhower had, we have got 
26.1 now, and we are deporting--let's see. Last year, 2017, we deported 
226,000.
  So they got 26 times, more than 26 times better performance, better 
results, back in the fifties with only 800 Border Patrol agents for 
2,000 miles along the southern border, where now it is 21,000. Twenty-
six Border Patrol agents for every one they had then, and we are 
deporting fewer people than they did then.
  And by the way, that 1,074,000 voluntary returns, we can set up 
policy that brings about a lot of that as well.
  But ever since Dwight Eisenhower, each President that has succeeded 
Dwight Eisenhower diminished our enforcement worse and worse and worse 
and less and less and less. So from Dwight Eisenhower, we ratcheted 
downhill, and there were fewer that were deported and less border 
security under Kennedy, under Johnson, under Nixon, and on down the 
line.
  When we got to Bill Clinton, I was very concerned that he was not 
paying attention to his responsibility to take care that the laws were 
faithfully executed. When I look back on what he had to say at the 
time, he was at least giving lip service to it, unlike Hillary Clinton, 
who essentially came out and said we are going to have to give people 
citizenship, reward them with citizenship for breaking our laws.
  I recall a time here in about 2004 or 2005 when the immigration 
debate was ramping up again and they had bussed in thousands--many of 
them illegal aliens, I presume--out here on the west lawn. A lot of 
them had on matching white T-shirts. I don't remember what they said.
  Senator Teddy Kennedy was active then. He went out to speak to them 
from a sound system and a podium, and he was speaking through an 
interpreter, a Spanish language interpreter. But I recall the language 
that he used and how he said it, because it caught me as the clarion 
call, and it was this.

                              {time}  2115

  He said to those thousands, and I believe actually tens of thousands, 
he said, ``Some say report to be deported. I say, report to become an 
American citizen.''
  Thirteen or 14 years ago, that message was uttered out here on the 
west lawn, Mr. Speaker, and that message was calling people into 
America and promising them citizenship. And this grinds on, the same 
old story. Erode the rule of law, sacrifice the rule of law, discount 
and diminish and dilute citizenship, and take away a measure of the 
influence of citizens and hand it over to people that have demonstrated 
their contempt for our laws.
  But just a little bit before that, I believe it was the year before--
I remember the day, it was January 6, 2004--Karl Rove had prepared a 
speech for George W. Bush and it was an amnesty speech. It was one that 
played off of Tom Ridge's amnesty speech that he had given the December 
before. And they decided that they needed to, I will say, advertise to 
Hispanics in south Texas, because they had lost most of those counties 
in south Texas that are heavily Hispanic. And, of course, they are 
heavily Democrat as well.
  I remember that discussion with Karl Rove and I said: Karl, you 
cannot redefine amnesty. The American people know what amnesty is. And 
whatever you want to say about it, if you want to say it is not amnesty 
if they pay a fine, it is not amnesty if they learn to speak English, 
it is not amnesty if they go to school, it is not amnesty if they get a 
job, what has that got to do with it? To grant amnesty is to pardon 
immigration lawbreakers, a class of people, pardon them.
  And if they say: Well, it is not a pardon if they have to pay a fine. 
Well, it is a pardon if you don't apply the penalty that exists in the 
law at the time they violate the law. You can't change the penalty 
afterwards and claim that it is not amnesty. The American people aren't 
going to go for that.
  At least Ronald Reagan was honest. He said: I am going to sign the 
amnesty act, and he did. I wish he hadn't, but he did. But you can't 
redefine it as amnesty is a pardon for immigration lawbreakers. And 
what is going on here, it is coupled with the reward of the objective 
of their crime.
  When you hand someone the objective of the crime that they committed 
and you say it is not amnesty--I mean, there are a lot of different 
ways to describe this, but I think the simplest way is just to say that 
if someone robs a bank and they step out on the steps of the bank with 
the loot and you stop them. Then someone else robs a bank; and someone 
else robs a bank; and finally, you decide, this is such a popular 
activity, we can't enforce the law anymore. We would like to have you 
stop, but since we are going to let you all know we are not going to 
enforce the law, there are going to be more bank robbers. And, by the 
way, all of you get to keep the loot.
  That is what this amnesty is and the American people know it, and 
there is outrage that is building. The clouds are not just on the 
horizon. They are sweeping toward the city. And if we are not going to 
finish this debate and shoot down that last amnesty bill, then I will 
tell you that the clouds will be hanging over this city next week on 
Monday and Tuesday when we come back to town.
  The American people are going to be more and more outraged every day 
because they are just figuring out what is going on. They are being 
told that these bills aren't amnesty.
  I mean, there was a Member down in conference that said the word 
amnesty and some folks hissed at him because they didn't think you 
should call it that.
  Well, it clearly is amnesty. You can look it up in Black's Law 
Dictionary. You can take my word for it.
  But Members have been going through all kinds of mental gyrations to 
try to find a way to rationalize the vote that they want to put up 
because they think that they are politically in a safer place to vote 
for amnesty, but they know they can't admit it.
  I had a Member come to me and he said: ``What is the definition of 
amnesty? I have heard three different definitions in the last hour.'' 
And I said: ``Well, what is happening there is, they are rationalizing 
their vote and they are trying to redefine amnesty so they don't have 
to confess that they are voting for amnesty.''
  Well, I am not going to have to confess that I voted for amnesty 
because I am not going to vote for amnesty. But I am going to hold 
people to a real definition of amnesty.
  And by the way, we ought to think about people who have been 
separated from their families permanently.
  How about the angel moms and the angel dads who had a son or daughter 
that were killed by an illegal alien, especially those that have been 
turned loose after they have been encountered by law enforcement.
  It happens every day in this country, Mr. Speaker, and it happens 
multiple times a day. This country is dotted with the graves of those 
who have been killed at the hand of criminal aliens in this country, 
many of whom had been encountered by law enforcement and turned loose.
  One of those I think of is Jamiel Shaw, whom I got to know here as a 
witness in a hearing that I had called years ago. His son, a high 
school football star, a stellar athlete with a great future ahead of 
him, was killed in the

[[Page H5501]]

neighborhood just a couple of blocks down the street from Jamiel's 
home. His son, 17-year-old, Jazz was his nickname, Jazz Shaw, killed by 
an illegal alien who had been deported.
  Part of his gang's mission was he had to kill a Black guy. He was 
killed because of his race. He was murdered because of gangs. And he 
was murdered by an illegal alien.
  And Jamiel Shaw has the courage these years after to step up every 
day that need be and tell us how painful it is and what kind of an 
obscene mistake it is to reward lawbreakers.
  If we had enforced immigration laws, Jamiel's son, Jazz, would be 
alive today and he knows that. And he said over Father's Day, if you 
are worried about separating families, try spending your Father's 
Day talking to a grave like he has for the last 10 years.

  That shakes me when I read that in text. Another one, Mary Ann 
Mendoza, her son, Brandon, a fine law enforcement officer, killed by an 
illegal alien driver. Sabine Durden, her son, her only child, Dominic, 
killed by an illegal alien, a DACA recipient. Laura Wilkerson, her son, 
Joshua, was tortured, murdered, and his body burned by an illegal 
alien.
  Who can forget Kate Steinle? Her father, Jim, testified here in this 
Congress about what happened when she was killed by a five-times 
deported illegal alien.
  And my constituents, my friends to this day, Michelle and Scott Root, 
who lost their daughter, Sarah Root, who was a perfect 4.0 student in 
criminal justice at Bellevue College. She had graduated the day before 
when she was run down on the road by an illegal alien who was on a 
first-name basis with his immigration attorneys, and who was bailed out 
of jail for $5,000. He absconded back to his home country, Honduras.
  They said he was bailed out of jail before they could bury their 
daughter, and for less money than it took to bury their daughter. And 
what do they have left? They have got memories and broken hearts.
  What about the four children who were killed up in Cottonwood, 
Minnesota, when the school bus was run off the road by an illegal alien 
who twice had been deported and still ran the school bus off the road. 
These four kids who were killed were two siblings, and then a child 
from each of two other families.
  And some said: ``Accidents happen. It has got nothing to do with 
immigration.'' And I say: If we enforce our laws, they are not there to 
kill our youth. And if you don't agree with me, try going up to those 
parents and try to convince them that their children would still be 
dead if we had deported that individual when she was first encountered 
by the law.
  No, we really know. We should know in our hearts and know in our 
conscience the real truth here, Mr. Speaker. And I think that also a 
piece of the real truth is: Who are these DACA recipients?
  Barack Obama gave us the standard on what it took to be a DACA 
recipient. You had to have come in by a certain date or at a certain 
age, and then he closed that off at the other end. And you needed to be 
going to school.
  So this little chart here tells us a little something. How many of 
them had no diploma. They might be dropouts--we can't be sure--21.9 
percent. There are 817,000 of them in this database. 817,798 we are 
working with, Mr. Speaker.
  And you can see, here are those who have no record at all. They 
didn't even bother to fill in the blank in their application or their 
renewal form on whether they had ever gone to school. Maybe they never 
had--that is the safest presumption--68.9 percent of them, that number 
is 564,000 disqualified themselves because they are not going to 
school. They don't attest that they ever went to school.
  Even with help filling out the form, that information is not 
available, and it should have disqualified them. But they got their 
DACA permit anyway. So there is that 68.9 percent, and 21.9 percent 
over here that may be dropouts, but we can't be sure. So that is 
179,719.
  Then, we had self-reported criminals, over 3,000 of them in the first 
tranche that we were able to look at the numbers; 66 percent of the 
self-reported criminals received DACA permits. And I guess apparently a 
number of them committed a lot of crimes after they received their DACA 
permits, because when they applied for their renewals, then there was a 
number of well over 30,000, around 33,000, that were self-reported 
criminals. 94 percent of the self-reported criminals got DACA renewals.
  I mean, they are honest criminals at least. They admitted they were 
criminals, but they were rewarded for being honest, I guess, because 
two-thirds of those in the beginning of the first tranche of criminals 
were granted DACA status. And then 94 percent, coming to 31,854 that 
received their renewals, even though they had committed crimes while 
they were DACA recipients.
  Then we have 8,964 DACA recipients who would be normally, under the 
rules, under the Obama rules, would be disqualified because of their 
date of entry. They entered in too early or they entered in too late, 
8,964. These are numbers that came from USCIS, by the way. I started 
asking for them last September and finally received these numbers a 
little over 2 weeks ago.
  2,100 DACA recipients have no data on their nationality. You can't 
check that box so they should have been disqualified. 775 of them went 
back to their home country. They put that on their application. That 
should disqualify them. They can't say, through no fault of their own, 
that they weren't aware of what they did. If they were aware that they 
went home, they were aware that they snuck back in and that they 
violated the law again.

  When I add this all up, and I have to discount that there must be 
duplicates in these categories, just to be fair, Mr. Speaker, but if we 
presume that there were no duplicates, that each time that one of these 
categories that would normally kick them out was an individual, but 
there might have been people that were criminals that also had no 
education.
  But when I added up the rules violations here that should have 
disqualified some of them, out of the 817,798 that were approved, there 
were 789,851 application forms that were deficient and should have 
brought about a disqualification.
  So I just did the math, a little bit more for fun than it is for a 
definitive number. Only 27,947 of them would qualify even as they 
attested to their eligibility.
  These records are junk. The Obama administration put them in folders 
on paper, seven pages of application for each applicant, and there are 
around 2 million of these applications between the originals and the 
renewals. And of those 2 million, that is 14 million pieces of paper, 
they just began to electronically enter that data on November 1 of 
2015, I believe that date would be.
  So we have got a short, little window of these DACA recipients. But 
here are some other things. How good was the education they got of 
those who attested they had an education? So we are dealing again with 
817,000--almost 818,000. Let's see.
  Those who got a GED, 1,789 of them. That is two-tenths of a percent 
even had a GED. And high school graduates, 37,300. So there are 4.5 
percent that are high school graduates. Some college credit, less than 
a year--so they went to college, 33,000 of those. And let's see, one or 
more years of college, no degree, 620 of those. So those who started 
college, 33,000 and change. Those who entered the second year beyond, 
add another 620.
  But those who came with an associate's degree, 235. And these are 
just raw numbers, not percentages, of course. And those who have a 
bachelor's degree, college educated: 246 out of 817,000 have a college 
degree; 14 managed to achieve a master's; professional degrees, 2; 
doctorates, 1; doctor degree, 1.

                              {time}  2130

  So I have heard all this story about valedictorians, and I guess 
maybe that valedictorian could be that one who received the doctorate 
degree.
  I am a little confused by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Flores), who 
has all of these highly educated Dreamers down there in his district. 
They don't show up in these applications unless maybe it is in his 
district where this single doctor is. These two professionals, I 
presume maybe they could be lawyers. I met one of those. He told me 
that he is a DACA lawyer. I said: That is great. Just what we need, 
another lawless lawyer.

[[Page H5502]]

  So when I looked through these numbers, they don't at all paint the 
picture that I am hearing from these Members of Congress among 
Democrats or Republicans on what a DACA recipient really is and what 
the typical profile would be of these DACA recipients.
  It is true that many of them did, according to the records, come in 
at a fairly young age. I actually thought that would be higher than it 
turned out to be. There are around 135,000 of these 817,000 who were 
brought in at prime gang age recruitment. The oldest one now is about 
37 years old. So I presume some of them are grandparents by now.
  The rule of law is hanging in the balance. It is our job to keep our 
oath of office, and that is to preserve, protect, and defend this 
Constitution of the United States, and that means defend the rule of 
law. If we allow it to be sacrificed here because our hearts or our 
politics overrule our heads, then this country will rue the day, and 
none of us who votes on this issue here will live to see the day that 
the rule of law is restored again.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________