[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 17 (Monday, January 28, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H1239-H1241]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         NECESSARY BORDER WALL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Grothman) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have another weekend gone by and 
another speech of our President on the issue of illegal immigration and 
what to do with the wall on the southern border.
  I take this opportunity, after spending the weekend talking to 
several constituents of the Sixth Congressional District, to deal with 
some misconceptions in this debate.
  The first misconception I would like to talk about is whether Donald 
Trump can compromise, because there are some people out there who feel 
that the delay in opening the government was because this, admittedly, 
type A individual could not compromise.
  The shutdown was caused because we had not passed an appropriation 
bill that both, I can say, sides, both the pro-wall and anti-wall 
people could agree with. President Trump previously--this is his third 
year--signed two appropriation bills funding the Department of Homeland 
Security and the rest of the government without getting a wall. It was 
not until the third time that President Trump and Congress could not 
reach an agreement on the Homeland Security bill. And I will point out 
that was largely because Congress couldn't get along, not President 
Trump.
  After a delay of over 30 days, President Trump has, one more time, 
compromised. He compromised to allow 3 more weeks of the government to 
be open on the promise, or the implied promise, of the Speaker that she 
will, in good faith, negotiate about a wall.
  President Trump, during this time, also agreed to an extension, a 
DACA extension, which the border patrol, quite frankly, would disagree 
with, because they feel it will encourage more people to be optimistic 
and come here illegally across the border. He also extended temporary 
protected status, another thing which may or may not be right, but was 
a further olive branch towards people, who, so far, would refuse to 
vote for a budget with the funding of a wall.
  In any event, I think, if you look at the past, President Trump has 
been more than willing to compromise, signing bill after bill in his 
first 2 years, despite not making due on his number one campaign 
promise, extending temporary protected status, a DACA extension, and 
now a 3-week extension.
  You can say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but you cannot say he 
is not willing to compromise. I think very, very many people feel he 
has compromised more than enough.
  The next question is: Do we need a wall? Is a wall necessary? And the 
fact is it is. We need a wall because we need secure borders.
  First of all, as has been pointed out, 70 percent of the heroin in 
this country, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths, comes 
across our southern border. Some of that heroin comes across points of 
entry, and at the points of entry, it is not unusual to catch people 
sneaking in heroin. Some people have made something of the fact that 
not a lot of heroin is caught in the 60 percent of the southern border 
that has no barrier at all up.
  That is because there is no barrier. We have no idea how much heroin 
is coming across there, but common sense will tell you, if you wanted 
to sneak illegal drugs in this country and have a choice between going 
across a regular point of entry with perhaps dogs and border control 
agents or somebody out in the middle of nowhere, you would go somewhere 
out in the middle of nowhere. It is hard to tell me that anyone cares 
about the heroin crisis in this country if they do not want a wall.
  The next thing to look for is all the people sneaking into the 
country. The border patrol itself will tell you they have no idea how 
many people are coming across the border. We can say, at a minimum, we 
have 11 or 12 million people in this country illegally, but for all I 
know, talking with somebody from the border patrol today, it could be 
20 million.
  And the question is, if we are going to let more people in this 
country, are we going to let people in this country who are sneaking 
across the border or people who are coming here legally?
  Another problem with people coming here legally, I would argue, is 
they may be more likely to use welfare or that sort of thing when they 
come to the country. Talking to the customs agents, I have found 
evidence, when they looked at people's purses, when they looked at 
people's wallets, of evidence of people using EBT cards or Medicaid 
cards, taking free goods from the American taxpayer.
  People are committing crime. One can see when more walls are built on 
the southern border; crime goes down on the other side of the wall. A 
large percentage of people who are in Federal prisons are illegal 
immigrants, which is not surprising, given that they broke the law to 
come here.

  It is a dangerous way to get in. Thousands of people have been found 
dead trying to sneak across areas not at a point of entry. And having 
been down in the desert in Arizona, I can easily see why that would 
happen. People are giving children to other people to come across the 
border, knowing it is easier to stay here if you come with children.
  Obviously, that is a dangerous thing. As President Trump says, it is 
a humanitarian crisis not to shut off the flow of people who are coming 
across the desert hoping to get to America.
  Finally, it is a huge cost to the American taxpayer. Something is 
said about the almost $6 billion President Trump is asking for a wall. 
A variety of different organizations make different guesses as to the 
cost of illegal immigration every year. It is probably more than $50 
billion. It is not surprising when you take into effect the free 
healthcare, the free education, the welfare given out, and the cost to 
our criminal justice system.
  In any event, do we need a wall? If we care about heroin, we need a 
wall. If we care about the cost to government, we need a wall. If we 
care about people who are hurt by criminals who come across the border, 
we need a wall. And I should point out that, right now, that border is 
controlled by the drug cartels in Mexico. We need a wall.
  The third issue I would like to address is there are some people who 
feel that Donald Trump is anti-immigrant or America is becoming 
nativist by requiring a wall. That is not true. Every

[[Page H1240]]

year, in this country, over 700,000 people are sworn in legally to 
become citizens in this country. Almost 4 million people are given work 
visas to come into this country. Another close to 2 million people come 
into this country hoping to be students or to become students in this 
country.
  All we are asking, if people want to sneak across the border, is do 
it legally. Get in line to be one of the 700,000 people who are going 
to be sworn in legally. Get in line to be one of the almost 4 million 
people who get work-type visas to come here.
  I think compared to other countries, quite frankly, there is no 
comparison. You look at other countries--Mexico, Germany, countries 
like that--you will find the number of people that they are allowing to 
naturalize into their country is percentage-wise much less than the 
United States of America.

                              {time}  2015

  It is incredibly open-minded, and with open arms, that the United 
States continues to let these large numbers of people come into this 
country to naturalize, to become students, or to work in this country, 
and nobody is talking about reducing those very large numbers. All we 
are saying is: Don't skip in line.
  The next issue I hear people talk about is: Do walls work? If you 
build a wall, will it prevent people from coming across the border?
  We can look at the southern border already, and we can look at walls 
around the world.
  Look at the southern border. In the 1990s, we built a border wall 
between San Diego and Tijuana. People crossing at that point dropped 92 
percent, an incredible success.
  We have built other walls, walls near El Paso, walls near Tucson, 
walls near Yuma. All of these walls currently built have reduced 
illegal immigration by over 90 percent.
  Look around the world in other countries building walls. Israel built 
a well-known wall around 2010 between themselves and Egypt. Before they 
built the wall, they were having about 1,500 people come across their 
border illegally. After they built the wall, bit by bit, that number 
has dropped all the way down to nothing. That is a pretty good success 
rate, going from 1,500 a week to nothing.
  You don't hear those people saying: Oh, people are sneaking across. 
They're going over the wall or going under the wall.
  No, a well-done wall reduces immigration almost entirely.
  Right now, 10 EU nations in Europe, countries similar to ours, have 
walls. Hungary built a wall on its border with Syria and had a 90 
percent drop in the number of people crossing the border, another 
example of a very successful wall.
  The other thing I will point out, having spent last week down on our 
southern border, the Border Patrol, every one of them who I talked to, 
says they want a wall. They live with it every day. The Border Patrol 
would not want a wall if it was not effective.
  The next thing I would like to point out is the cost of a wall. 
President Trump is asking for $5.7 billion. $5.7 billion is a lot of 
money. But now we have to put it in context with what we are spending 
in other parts of our budget.
  What President Trump is asking for is one-seventh the cost of foreign 
aid that we spend year after year after year, and all the people who 
are keeping the government closed because they refuse to vote for a 
wall, they have no qualms--or almost all of them have no qualms--about 
voting for seven times as much every year on foreign aid.
  It is about one-twelfth the increase in defense spending under 
President Trump, one-twelfth just the increase. For the protection of 
our country in the future, I can think of few things that are more 
important than stopping the invasion from south of our Nation.
  It is about 0.1 percent--one-tenth of 1 percent--of our overall 
Federal budget, and about four-tenths of 1 percent of what we refer to 
as the discretionary part of our budget.
  So while $5.7 billion is a lot of money, when you look compared to 
the other money that Congress appropriates again and again, year after 
year after year, they usually don't object to the money being spent on 
other things.
  Now, you hear it said that walls are immoral. I will point out that I 
think this is a new and rather silly argument. I think keeping heroin 
out of this country; I think keeping a potential criminal class out of 
this country; I think making sure that our future immigrants are people 
who stand in line coming here are not considered immoral. But I will 
detect a little bit of hypocrisy of people who make that argument.
  I mentioned a second ago the wall between Tijuana and San Diego, 
which was built during the term of Bill Clinton. I am sure, if you go 
back and check the papers of the time, when Bill Clinton felt it was 
necessary to build a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, nobody said it 
was immoral.
  Later on, more of the wall right now was built on an appropriation 
passed when President Bush was President. Some of that wall, or 
improvements in the wall, were built when President Obama was 
President.
  I have a feeling, if we go back, we won't find anybody saying the 
wall was immoral when it was built by President Clinton or President 
Bush or President Obama.
  So one of two things is going on here. Either we have partisanship 
rearing its ugly head, and people are perfectly happy to vote for a 
wall under other Presidents, or some people, both Republicans and 
primarily Democrats, are becoming a lot more radical since parts of the 
wall were built in the 1990s or the zeros or the teens.
  The next thing I would like to deal with is that you sometimes hear 
it said by people who have kept the government closed by their refusal 
to build a wall that everybody wants border security. Sadly, that is 
not true.
  You would feel any citizen with common sense would want to enforce 
our borders, but if you look, the Governor of California has said that 
he wants illegal immigrants to be given free medical care in his State. 
The mayor of New York has said much the same thing.
  There are over 500 sanctuary cities in the United States of America. 
A sanctuary city is a city where the local mayor or city council has 
said that we are not going to ask citizens in our jurisdiction whether 
or not they are here illegally.
  Look, if you have a city, or a county, or a whole State like 
California that has become a sanctuary city, those governors or mayors 
or legislators or city councils of course do not want immigration laws 
taken seriously.
  In the last 2 years, a bill was brought forth to try to end sanctuary 
cities. A few Republicans voted against the bill, and all but three 
Democrats voted against the bill.
  I try to put in my mind, what would cause someone, if they really 
cared about enforcing the border, to say we have no problem with 
counties or cities, in essence, putting up a sign to say: We are not 
going to ask people whether they are here illegally.
  The point is that, obviously, there are a lot of people out there who 
don't care about border security. We have several Congressmen getting 
elected on the platform of saying that they don't want to fund ICE, the 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
  Why would somebody not want to enforce the immigration and customs 
authority and, at the same time, want to have our borders taken 
seriously?
  The answer is, they don't want our borders taken seriously. There are 
a lot of people who believe, as the Minnesota Attorney General and 
former Congressman Keith Ellison say, that national borders themselves 
are an injustice. They want the idea of a separate United States of 
America, I guess, to permanently change.
  You may think it is ridiculous to say that the idea that we shouldn't 
have national borders is a disgrace, but this has become, sadly, 
mainstream among the left wing segment of the political class.
  The Oakland mayor recently sent an alarm, telling people, including 
particularly people with a criminal background in Oakland, that ICE was 
going to make a sweep and try to pick up criminals. Why would she do 
that if she wanted our immigration laws enforced?
  The answer is, more and more people are getting elected in this 
country who do not want immigration laws enforced.
  Now, I have a few more suggestions for President Trump. I think it is 
unfortunate that we have not built the

[[Page H1241]]

wall yet, but having talked to some members of the Border Patrol, 
perhaps, in some ways, it is a blessing in disguise.
  The $5.7 billion that President Trump wants will be nowhere near 
enough to secure the entire border. It will secure more of the border 
than now, and it will be a big step in the right direction. That is 
true. But I think perhaps President Trump, now that they have kind of 
bit his hand after he has compromised and compromised and compromised, 
rather than build for just $5.7 billion, should try to increase the 
size of the wall, so that we are covering all of the easy entry points 
on the southern border, which would take about $8 billion. I do feel it 
is important enough to secure our borders that that would be an 
appropriate thing to do.
  There are other things that, having been at the border, are 
suggested. We are right now not making anywhere near a good enough 
effort to see if cash is going from the cartels back from north of the 
border to south of the border. I would ask President Trump to include 
cash-sniffing dogs that can detect this cash. If people try to sneak 
across the border without declaring that cash, that cash can be taken, 
and it can be very devastating for the cartels.
  We could use more density meters for cars, in which you can detect 
whether there are drugs within cars. That is another thing that would 
help our Border Patrol become more effective.
  Finally, he can try to engage people, if there are any people out 
there who care about our borders, about the ridiculous asylum laws. I 
don't know if everybody is aware out there--not enough Americans are 
aware--that anybody who comes to the southern border can say they are 
fleeing from violence or religious persecution and, after being 
detained briefly, they eventually will be let go for a court date, 
which might be years in the future. As long as that law continues in 
effect, we will continue to have millions of people stream across the 
border.
  I want to look here at some of the walls that we already have, walls 
that were built by other Presidents and proved to be very effective.
  Here we have a wall in San Diego built by President Clinton. It is 
not an immoral wall. It is a very effective wall that has decreased 
illegal border crossings in the San Diego-Tijuana area by over 90 
percent.
  We have another wall here that ends in Nogales, in the Arizona area. 
I think this wall was built under President Bush. It might have been 
somewhat improved under President Obama, another very moral wall that 
is protecting people on the north side of the border.
  I want to point out another reason why we need the wall. I talked to 
some ranchers in the area. They came across the Salvadoran gangs that 
we know are so brutal, and they fed them. They weren't harmed. But can 
you imagine living near the border where we have people crossing the 
border, either south to north or north to south, who are members of the 
violent El Salvador gangs?
  Here is another picture and a wall near Sasabe and another point 
where the wall ends. This is an area in which, even if President Trump 
gets the wall he wants, they will not be funding an extension of this 
wall. It is one of the reasons why we should ask for a little bit more 
than $5.7 million for this wall.

  I will point out that the new walls they build will be better than 
walls in the past. We can make walls higher than this, and we can make 
walls in which we have sensors designed to track people coming up, and 
walls in which we have flat areas on top of the wall that would be very 
difficult to climb over. It will be very difficult to get over these 
new high-tech walls.
  In any event, here is another picture of a wonderful wall in Sasabe. 
We just wish the wall was a little bit bigger.
  Here we are going to look at another couple walls that countries feel 
are effective.
  Here we have a picture of where a wall is in Jordan. The feeling is 
that the United States may have built part of that wall to protect the 
poor Jordanians from terrorists coming across. I don't remember anybody 
objecting to that wall.
  Here we have the wall in Israel that was built and has cut illegal 
immigration coming across the border from Egypt down to literally zero.
  Now, looking at these walls, these effective walls in the past that 
have been built by other Presidents, and thinking that I do not want to 
have another shutdown in 3 weeks, the tremendous inconvenience for the 
government workers, the inconvenience for people who are relying on the 
government for inspections and that sort of thing, I will ask my 
colleagues who refused to vote for a border wall during the last 
shutdown to just imagine, stop and think for a minute, and pretend 
that, instead of President Trump, we have a President Clinton, or a 
President Bush, or a President Obama, and maybe, to help you pretend, 
you can pretend that the border wall is not there to protect the 
residents of Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona, but it is there to 
protect the residents of Jordan.
  Just like in the past, when you voted for bills to protect the 
residents of Jordan, or voted for Presidents to build walls other than 
President Trump, just sit back, close your eyes, and pretend we are 
building a wall to protect another country, or building a wall at 
another time, and just vote ``yes,'' so that we don't have to go 
through another shutdown, and so that we can protect American citizens 
from drug lords and protect them from people coming across the border 
out of line, to be fair to those people who are coming to this country 
legally.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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