[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 104 (Thursday, June 21, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5503-H5505]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) until 10 p.m.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting week.
  We were told when we were starting the week that we were going to be 
taking up a couple of immigration bills. Before we could even get that 
started, we were met with a firestorm of absolute outrage about 
children being separated from their parents.
  Well, anybody who is a parent doesn't want that to happen, even 
though, as a felony judge in Texas, I know. I watched it happened 
constantly. It happens every day in our country. It is heartbreaking, 
but it happens every day all over the country when any person in the 
United States commits a crime and is taken to jail.
  I watched it happen over and over in my courtroom. Your heart breaks 
for their children. You can't let the children go to jail with the 
parent. Sometimes there is somebody else to take care of them. 
Sometimes it is Child Protective Services. But it is still 
heartbreaking. That is what we have seen on the border.
  We have a President and Attorney General trying to follow their oath 
and enforce the law. But it is heartbreaking when you see some of these 
pictures like the first one here. When I saw that, my heart broke for 
this beautiful little boy in a blue shirt--actually, I think this is a 
separate picture, and these are two others--initially, just seeing 
this, where it looks like he is in a cage.
  You feel bad that Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and President 
Trump are the ones in office when this is going on. But then we find 
out actually he is a child of one of the protesters that is protesting 
the Trump administration. He is not really incarcerated. This was 
completely trumped up, so to speak, by the media and by the groups that 
are trying to do everything they can since

[[Page H5504]]

the stories about Russia collusion turned out to have more to do with 
the Clinton campaign colluding with the Russians than Trump.
  Well, this has to be another source of attack. Again, it is just 
heart-wrenching to see a child like that, until you find out he is not 
really in a cage. He is not somebody that the Trump administration was 
restraining. In fact, here is the same little boy skipping around over 
here on the other side of the fence with the protesters. So it turns 
out he is not.
  But then we look at some of these other pictures here. We will do 
this in rapid order, because we are running out of time.
  Here you have all of these people, many of them children, in this 
facility and a chain link fence everywhere. It is treating them like 
animals, basically. They are all under these shiny blankets. It is 
tragic. But then we found out, actually, that was while President Obama 
was in office and then conditions improved dramatically.
  This is another tragic picture. Tragic. It does look like they are 
caged animals. Again, they were appearing to be caged animals during 
the Obama administration. President Obama was responsible for that.
  You see this tragic sign ``Juvenile Holding Cell,'' where the Trump 
administration is treating these little juveniles this way. They are 
locked up in this little room. It is strictly for juveniles being held 
away from others. Then we find out, no, that was the Obama 
administration, too. But all of these pictures were originally touted 
as being part of Trump's war on children.
  Here is a female juvenile holding cell. That is proof positive that 
President Trump was isolating these female juveniles away. Then we find 
out, no, that is part of the Obama administration. It is proof positive 
the Obama administration was separating children from their parents, 
even though there are some lamebrain newspapers in Texas that try to 
tell me I didn't see what I personally saw.

  I have been there. I have seen what they did. I have been there all 
hours of the day and night.
  All these lumps are precious little children, and it is heartbreaking 
to think that any parent could send these children--90 percent of 
them--unaccompanied through deserts and put them in the custody of 
gangs. The former gangs are the ones the drug cartels use normally as 
coyotes to bring these precious people across.
  Tragic circumstances. Horrendous circumstances. Yet that was all 
going on, all of this tragic stuff was happening, without one single 
word from Hollywood about the tragedy that President Obama was causing.
  A couple of more quick pictures here. Again, these were portrayed 
initially as being proof of the horrors of the Trump administration. It 
turns out these were all under the Obama administration.
  All these little silver lumps, it turns out that most of them are 
children. All of them are people under there. Tragic circumstances, but 
it is what President Obama was doing, his administration was doing, not 
the Trump administration.
  So all these people who were throwing dirt balls at the Trump 
administration, where they actually stuck was on the Obama 
administration.
  It always helps if you don't just fly off like so many have. It is 
not really mainstream media; it is the alt-left media. Once they were 
the mainstream media, now they are the alt-left media.
  But they are covering for the Obama administration, trying to make 
the Trump administration look horrendous, when what the Trump 
administration has done has been far more caring and supportive of the 
children than the facilities that I saw during the Obama 
administration. They have a lot better facilities they are using now.
  The ones I am particularly familiar with are down in south Texas. 
That is where I spent so much time during the Obama administration. 
Since President Trump has been in office, I am telling you the 
facilities are a lot better, and they are doing a better job of caring 
for people.
  I heard somebody this morning say: Wow, there are so many people who 
are just getting outraged about children being ripped from their 
mothers' arms. I believe Mr. King had mentioned that nothing does that 
like abortion.
  Then somebody reminded me this morning that when children were being 
ripped from their mothers in a process called abortion, it appears that 
the Democrats felt like it was okay. At least they didn't say anything 
about it, not that I heard, when those little children's body parts 
were being sold off after being ripped from their moms in abortions.
  So politics makes for strange situations, to have people who are not 
outraged by a precious little child being ripped from the mother's womb 
and killed and have the parts sold off--not bothered by that. But then 
when 90 percent of the children coming into this country are said to be 
coming unaccompanied and many of those that come--we have 12,000 who 
are being held right now. Some of them tenderly held; some of them not 
so tenderly.
  But when you have nearly 40 percent who are male, teenaged, and 
potentially part of gangs or subject to being recruited into gangs, it 
is not the precious little child that is often being portrayed by the 
alt left media.
  We need to have commonsense. I know in Washington, it is just sense. 
Back in east Texas it is commonsense. Here, it is sense.
  In the few minutes I have left, we have been taking up bills on 
border issues. I thought it was extremely unfortunate that our 
leadership would not allow us to have an amendment to the Goodlatte 
bill. It has so many good things in it. It has an amnesty for DACA. At 
the end, that was my problem.
  So many good things--I really think if our Republican leadership had 
wanted it to pass, they could have put on there a fix where children 
were not separated from their parents, and that would have helped get 
enough votes to go from 193 to get votes to pass it.
  But it just felt like our own leadership didn't want it to pass. They 
weren't going to allow something like that that would add votes, 
because many of them were out there saying: No, no. The compromise bill 
will get a lot more votes than the Goodlatte bill.
  It simply wasn't true. They were misreading our conference.
  I recall our Speaker, right after President Trump was elected, saying 
that he was hearing voices none of the rest of us heard. Well, some of 
us were saying those same things that President Trump was saying before 
the election, and we need them to be heard. But, apparently, they are 
still not being heard.
  But a good comparison was done by NumbersUSA on the issue of amnesty. 
Under the Goodlatte bill, it says 690,000 existing DACA recipients with 
Federal ID cards can apply for contingent nonimmigrant status, which 
may be renewed every 3 years indefinitely. It makes ineligible those 
aliens with two or more misdemeanors or a felony. It makes ineligible 
those aliens charged with a misdemeanor or felony while the charge or 
charges are still pending. But there is amnesty at the end of the 
Goodlatte bill.
  Under the compromise bill, as the Speaker was calling it, 1.8 million 
to 2.4 million illegal aliens who may have been eligible for DACA may 
apply for contingent nonimmigrant status, which may be renewed every 6 
years indefinitely.
  It goes on to describe that the applications could actually reach 5 
million or more. It is the largest amnesty ever provided. It is bigger 
than any amnesty that was ever given during President Obama's two 
terms.
  With regard to a special path to citizenship, the Goodlatte bill did 
not offer any, but there was one under the so-called compromise bill. 
It created a merit-based green card category for a path to citizenship 
and then had tens of thousands of green cards that would be available 
under the compromise bill that we are supposed to vote on early next 
week.

  With regard to the visa lottery, both of them reallocate those. With 
regard to chain migration--this was a good thing under the Goodlatte-
McCaul bill--it ends chain migration completely. However, under the so-
called compromise bill, it doesn't end chain migration. That is why 
some say it put us on the road to ending chain migration, because it 
doesn't. It doesn't. Parents who acted illegally to bring their 
children into this country illegally would be rewarded by being allowed 
to get legal.

[[Page H5505]]

  As far as enforcement, NumbersUSA has a good comparison there.
  It would be tragic if our leadership brings up the so-called 
compromise bill. The Goodlatte bill was a good one. It cut out amnesty. 
It ought to pass. We can secure the border. We can save this Republic 
and God will bless us and enable us to help these countries that are in 
trouble.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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