[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 46 (Thursday, March 11, 2021)]
[House]
[Page H1350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE CURRENT ISSUE AT THE BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Grothman) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak one more time 
about the current issue at the border.
  We have gone from a situation in which 1 year ago at this time there 
were 36,000 confrontations at the border to last February 100,000 
encounters at the border.
  In addition to a three-fold increase, there has been a corresponding 
increase in unaccompanied children at the border.
  How did this happen? There are several policies that should be 
reinstituted immediately.
  First of all, prior to President Trump being sworn in, we had a 
policy in which the Mexican Government was keeping people on their side 
of the border pending an asylum hearing. We have now undone that 
policy, which does three things:
  First of all, new people arriving at the border are escorted into the 
United States and sent somewhere inland.
  Secondly, people who have been waiting on the Mexican side of the 
border are coming across.
  And thirdly, you are sending the message around the world that the 
United States is not enforcing their immigration laws the way they are 
intended to be enforced. The word gets out, be it in Central America, 
be it in Mexico, be it in Asia, be it in Brazil, the United States is 
inviting people in. And with that situation comes the three-fold 
increase.
  Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama 
said at one time that 1,000 encounters a day at the southern border was 
a bad number. We now have three times what was considered a bad number 
under Barack Obama.
  The next thing we are doing is, we are getting rid of the agreements 
we had in Central America. President Trump maybe tweeted too much, but 
he engaged in negotiations with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras so 
that people stayed down there, rather than coming through Mexico to the 
United States. He did it, to a certain extent, with the carrot and 
stick of foreign aid which the United States had sent to those 
countries. That policy has also changed. And with the change in that 
policy people are streaming up through Central America.
  Again, from year to year there has been a 61 percent increase in 
unaccompanied children. People purport to say that they care about 
children being separated from their parents. Well, when you have more 
and more unaccompanied children showing up at the border, what do you 
think that means? These children inevitably are going to wind up 
separated from their parents, keeping families apart.
  I should point out, by the way, another thing that I am told bothers 
Central American countries. In this country in an effort to sometimes 
keep a child with both parents, if the parents don't get along that 
well, courts make an effort to keep both parents in the same region.
  I am told that the Central American countries do not like the fact 
that the United States sometimes will take children with even one 
parent, leaving the other parent behind. I think it would be better if 
we improved our relationship with those countries by trying to keep 
children with both parents.
  Other things that have been done is, sadly, we stopped the border 
wall construction. When I was down at the border we learned, with 
regard to the border wall, it takes four or five agents to man 2 miles 
of the old wall, which was sometimes little more than minor fencing. 
Now, with the new wall we need one Border Patrol agent for 2 miles, so 
there is a substantial savings there, as well.
  The catch and release policies are back, and with it a crisis is 
coming. America has to apply more pressure or tell the Biden 
administration, please, there is a reason why we have tripled the 
number of people, the number of encounters our Border Patrol is having 
today compared to this time last year. It is the policies that have 
been implemented in the first month and a half of the Biden 
administration.
  Please, President Biden, go back to the old policies in which people 
are held on the southern border and people can get a good hearing on 
their asylum claims, rather than creating a system in which, as a 
practical matter, people come here illegally and wind up just blending 
into the background.
  It is unfair to the people who are trying to access our country 
legally that people are coming here illegally and skipping ahead of 
them. Inevitably, as we take people without vetting them, we are 
getting a given number of people taking advantage of our benefits, and 
we are getting a number of people who are sneaking illegal drugs across 
the southern border.
  So, again, we have sent letters to President Biden, and I please ask 
him to respond to these letters and let the American public know: What 
is your plan to stop 100,000 people a month coming across the border 
before that 100,000 becomes 200,000 or 300,000?

  And it will become 200,000 or 300,000 because people around the world 
are watching the President, and if the President continues to make it 
clear he does not intend to enforce the border, people from all around 
the world will be coming here.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________