[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 118 (Monday, July 15, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H5816-H5817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THANKING HOUSTON FOR OPENING ITS DOORS

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, on this past Saturday, Houstonians 
gathered together at the Living Water International Apostolic 
Ministries in Houston with Pastor Stearns and about 10 other churches. 
I convened the press conference in the warehouse of this church filled 
with goods and necessities to respond to the most objectionable 
national order that I have ever heard from any President of the United 
States: to manipulate law enforcement and calling for national predawn 
raids across America.
  Now, no one in America wants open borders, and Democrats do not, but 
we do believe in due process, the Constitution, and the justness of the 
phraseology on the Statue of Liberty to bring our forlorn and worn to 
this country.
  We are the greatest experiment, and people in my constituency were 
frightened. I came home to say we must do something about it.
  And how powerful it was for the churches in our community to say: We 
will open our doors to those who are frightened about the fact that 
they will be separated from their children or their children separated 
from them.
  What a horrible image, internationally; how the United Nations has 
condemned it.
  And so on that day, we opened the churches of Houston for those 
migrants who were frightened by these predawn raids. One even occurred 
today.
  I finish my remarks by saying the 16th President of the United States 
really said what America is all about: ``We are not enemies, but 
friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it 
must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, 
stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living 
heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the 
better angels of our nature.''
  That is Abraham Lincoln. That is who we are.
  I thank Houston for opening its doors for those who are in fear.

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