[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 62 (Thursday, April 7, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H4423-H4429]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SOUTHERN BORDER ISSUES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee
(Mr. Fleischmann).
Mr. FLEISCHMANN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin
for yielding.
Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the Chattanooga Bar Association
on reaching the milestone of its 125th anniversary.
Since 1897, the Chattanooga Bar Association has made it its mission
to work for the betterment of the legal profession and the
administration of justice; to take an active interest in governmental
affairs; to stimulate a feeling of respect, esteem, and good-fellowship
among members of the Chattanooga Bar Association; and to provide and
promote legal education of the legal community and the public at large.
During its 125 years, the Chattanooga Bar Association has produced
many outstanding members who have shaped the history of Tennessee and
our Nation.
J.B. Frazier was a member of the board of directors during the first
5 years of CBA's existence and is the only Chattanoogan elected
Governor of the State of Tennessee. He later served in the United
States Senate.
Estes Kefauver served as the secretary-treasurer and vice president
of the association before being elected to serve as Tennessee's Third
District Congressman. Incidentally, that is the seat which I presently
hold.
He then went on to the United States Senate and made two bids for the
Democratic Presidential nomination before being selected as Adlai
Stevenson's Vice Presidential nominee during the 1956 Presidential
election.
I am extremely proud, myself, to have been a member of the
Chattanooga Bar Association since I began my law practice as a young
man in 1986. In 1996, I became the youngest person to serve as
president of the Chattanooga Bar Association, the 99th president, an
honor that is still near and dear to my heart.
[[Page H4424]]
Throughout its 125 years, the Chattanooga Bar Association has shown
our community, State, and the Nation the best of what it means to be a
lawyer, to practice law, and to pursue equal justice for all.
I am proud to recognize and honor the Chattanooga Bar Association as
they celebrate their 125th anniversary. I congratulate the CBA and wish
them much continued success in the future.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Roy).
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for
yielding. We will continue to engage in that.
With the permission of the gentleman from Wisconsin, I ask that he
also yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good) to engage in a
colloquy.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin controls the
time.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Roy) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good) for the purpose of a
colloquy.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time from the gentleman from
Wisconsin and his commitment to fighting to change this town, which,
unfortunately, too many of our colleagues are unwilling to do. I am
glad to have my friend from Virginia here as well.
Yesterday, we had an interesting exchange in the House Judiciary
Committee. We had a number of different conversations about the issue
of the ongoing threat at our border. I know that my friend from
Virginia was also here on the floor of the House last night, where we
had a continued conversation about the ongoing threat at the southern
border of the United States.
I would imagine that the people who I represent, and the people of
the State of Texas, would be horrified if they all got to see what I
see every day and the exchange with my colleagues here in this body
about what is actually happening at our border. What do I mean by that?
Yesterday, I had an exchange with the chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee because I was acknowledging, in the context of a debate we
were having about opening up visa waivers for the United States Virgin
Islands, that those kinds of waivers had been abused in Guam and other
territories of the United States. We were questioning why we are going
to open up these waivers while our border is wide open.
I pointed out the abuses that are happening at our border and the
abuses that are happening in Texas. I specifically talked about the
sexual abuses, the rapes, and the tragedy of what is occurring to
little girls and to people on the journey, in particular in Texas when
they cross the southern border because they are at the hands of the
dangerous cartels.
I said this at the time, that the committee chairman kind of scoffed.
It wasn't the first time I had seen some of our colleagues scoff with
respect to the perspectives that we are offering about what we see
every day and the conversations we have with people on the ground.
Why I think it merits conversation here on the floor of the House
is--and I want to get the gentleman from Virginia's perspective on
this--on behalf of the American people who we represent, the people of
the Commonwealth of Virginia, the people of the State of Texas, the
many people we represent, we are trying to articulate, for a body of
representatives of those people, that their lives are being impacted
and harmed by virtue of the refusal of this administration and,
frankly, many of the people of this Chamber to secure the border of the
United States.
In very short outline form, it comes in the form of empowered
cartels, dangerous individuals crossing our border, be they criminals,
be they terrorist members, or be they folks from state-sponsors of
terror.
It comes in the form of dangerous fentanyl and narcotics coming into
our communities, poisoning our families, poisoning our young, killing
people in schools.
It comes in the form of physical property damage to ranchers,
business owners, and people dealing with the dangerous flow coming
across the border.
It comes in the form of economic impacts and devastation.
It comes in the form of, for example, the town of Uvalde, Texas,
where you have 100 a day being dropped off. They have to deal with:
What do we do? Do we ship them to San Antonio? What do we do with our
schools? What do we do with our hospitals?
It comes in the form of danger because Border Patrol can't monitor
the border, and people come in, known got-aways.
It comes in the form of having criminals that exist in the United
States that aren't being prosecuted because, allegedly, we don't have
bed space, but really, we are not allowing ICE to do its job. You had,
for example, 25,000 prosecutions last year as opposed to something like
250,000 at the peak of the Trump administration.
Madam Speaker, I could go on and on and on. My point is, there is a
direct consequence and direct harm to the American people: dead
Americans, dead migrants, fentanyl pouring in, increased substance
abuse, empowerment of cartels, empowerment of China. This is happening
on a daily basis and getting worse.
Finally, now we are being told, even as the Speaker of the House has
COVID--if you look at the top stories in Politico, oh, my gosh,
everybody is running around. There are COVID-positive people in D.C.
Even as all of that is occurring, even as the extension of the proxy
voting fraud that is occurring in the House of Representatives--by
``fraud,'' I mean that half of this body, or more, is signing up and
standing up at this podium every day, saying, ``I am not voting because
of COVID,'' signing documentation, and we know the vast majority has
nothing to do with COVID.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, in addition to not showing up here
to do the job that their constituents sent them here to do, they are
literally lying about the reason they are not here.
Mr. ROY. Well, I never have proxy-voted.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Same here.
Mr. ROY. There is some sort of form, and you sign the form. In that
language, you say, ``due to the COVID emergency,'' or something to that
effect. I don't want to misrepresent the exact legal language. ``Due to
the COVID emergency, I cannot be here to vote, so I am allowing so-and-
so colleague to vote for me.''
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. I have been tempted to interrupt during the
proxy voting to ask the Speaker to allow me to offer a prayer for the
healing and recovery of the dozens of Members of Congress who are not
at work and who are apparently too sick from COVID to show up and do
their job.
{time} 1345
Mr. ROY. Given that we have lines and lines of people voting by
proxy, given that we have the Speaker of the House having COVID, given
that Politico is writing stories about how COVID is impacting the
swamp, given that you have to wear a mask on airplanes, given that we
are continuing to require members of our military to get a needle stuck
in their arm or potentially lose their job, given that we are
continuing to require among Federal workers like Border Patrol that
they get a needle in their arm or lose their job, then comes along the
infinite wisdom of the CDC director and the head of DHS, Secretary
Mayorkas, oh, let's get rid of title 42, literally the only thing that
is actually being used to enforce the border and stop half the flow of
people coming across our border.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Of course. That is why they are getting rid of
it because it has been used to turn back some illegal immigrants at the
border.
Mr. ROY. Is the gentleman aware of this?
Did we take a trip together to Del Rio, Texas, a month ago?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. We did. Where just a couple months ago you had
``Bidentown'' with some 20,000 illegal Haitian immigrants gathered
under the bridge. We learned a lot while we were there, and I thank the
gentleman for leading that trip.
I also want to say thank you to my friend, the Congressman from
Wisconsin, for allowing us to do this, and Congressman Roy for allowing
me to join him.
[[Page H4425]]
But we had the 20,000 illegal Haitian immigrants gathered in
``Bidentown'' under the bridge which they quickly--they weren't
concerned that the immigrants were coming in the country illegally.
They were concerned about the image and the embarrassment of 20,000 of
them in ``Biden's village'' there under the bridge, so they wanted to
distribute them into the interior of the country as quickly as they
could to hide it from the American people.
The gentleman will remember at first they tried to keep the media
from covering it. And then what they did was bus them into the country
to wherever they wanted to go. They flew a few back to Haiti, but most
of them they distributed into the country.
But we learned when we were in Del Rio--and my friend may have
already known this--I learned it that day when we were there that there
were 1,000 a day coming just through that corridor. Sadly, that is just
a fraction of the 7,000 a day who are coming across the southern border
along Arizona, New Mexico, Arizona, and, of course, Texas.
But to this President's policies now, what is the response?
We want to try to double or even triple that by rescinding title 42.
Mr. ROY. Does the gentleman remember that we stood at the river in
Del Rio, and we were there at the spot where many thousands of Haitians
had crossed last September? Does the gentleman remember that?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. That is right.
Mr. ROY. Is the gentleman aware of whether or not the Secretary of
Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or, for example, the White House
Press Secretary, Jen Psaki--quickly en route to a deal with MSNBC--
President Biden, or any other member of the administration who went to
the microphone and accused Border Patrol agents--lifetime public
servants serving on our border--of whipping human beings in the river;
is the gentleman aware of any of those individuals apologizing to them
and ensuring that they have been reposted in their jobs on horseback in
Del Rio?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. I'm not aware that they have apologized.
As a matter of fact, at least the President and the Vice President,
to my knowledge, have never been to the border to see what is
happening.
Again, my friend led one of the trips I was on. I have been to the
border four times in my first 15 months here in Congress so that I
could see better and experience in person the crisis at the border, to
see the human toll, to see the environmental toll, and then to see
exactly where that was happening.
These are Border Patrol officers who were trying to stand in the gap,
to be on the front line, and trying to do their job despite the efforts
of this administration to prevent them from doing their job, and
putting their lives, literally, at risk.
The previous time I was at the border--not the Del Rio trip--but the
previous time I was in Arizona, there was actually a shooting of a
Border Patrol officer while I was there. And yet here we have--as my
friend has said--the Department of Homeland Security Secretary
besmirching, smearing, and demeaning his own employees knowing full
well that is a lie, knowing full they are just leading those horses as
they do and trying to protect us American citizens from what is
happening at the border.
Mr. ROY. To make sure the Record is clear, I think the gentleman from
Virginia is correct that neither the President nor the Vice President
have been to the border in what I would call the spots where it
matters.
I believe the Vice President of the United States did take a trip
where she hopped through El Paso, met with a number of folks away from
the border, went to the border for a quick photo, went back to El Paso,
and hopped on a plane en route to California. I believe that transpired
some time last year.
But never to Del Rio, never meeting with people right down on the
river, never down to McAllen, never to Laredo, never talked to any of
the people being affected directly by what is occurring at the border.
Neither the so-called border czar--the Vice President--nor the
President of the United States have been to the border.
To be clear, the Secretary of Homeland Security has only been there,
I think, a couple of times. And when attending I do not believe he was
received particularly well by the line Border Patrol.
Does the gentleman agree?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. That is right.
They say they want to identify the root causes. I can tell my friend
what the root causes are. The root causes of the massive surge across
our border, if you will, the invasion at our border: is the cessation
of the Trump policies that were working. It is the enhancement of the
catch-and-release practice. It is ending MPP. It is stopping building
the wall. And it is promising amnesty and an open border during the
2020 election for illegals to come. That is why they were coming with
their Biden T-shirts on. It is not mandating E-Verify. It is allowing
the economic incentive to come. It is allowing individuals to come and
be apprehended and provided free social services, free healthcare
services, free education, and to be flown or distributed wherever they
want to go around the country at taxpayer expense with no specific
court date to even appear to have their case heard.
I want to compliment the gentleman's Governor from yesterday. I hope
that he will follow through on this. I hope this will actually happen.
Perhaps the gentleman from Texas has some thoughts on that. He
announced yesterday that he is going to bus these illegal aliens right
here to Washington, D.C., so our Democratic majority and our Democratic
administration who are willfully and purposely facilitating this
invasion at our southern border through their policies can accommodate
these illegal aliens when they are brought here.
I call on my Governor from Virginia and Governors throughout the
country to do the same thing.
Mr. ROY. I appreciate the observation by my friend from Virginia
about what the Governor of Texas is having to do to stand in the breach
and to stand up in order to protect Texans in the complete and total
absence of the Federal Government to do its constitutional duties: to
defend the sovereign Nation and to deal with immigration which he
refuses to do.
I would note that the Governor and the legislature has appropriated
$3 billion in Texas. I don't know when we are going to get that paid
back by this august institution when Texas is doing the job of the
Federal Government, but, okay, we are a border State. Texas funded $3
billion, and we have used that to take our DPS agents and DPS troopers
and move them down to the border to be able to back up Border Patrol.
As the gentleman knows from our experience down there in meeting with
DPS, he has been engaging in policy and building fences and other
stuff, and now he is engaging in a policy shift where there is going to
be some action with respect to vehicle inspections at ports of entry. I
applaud that.
I would note that I would go so far as to say, I would support the
Governor shutting down I-35.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Absolutely.
Mr. ROY. I would just shut down the port of entry. I would look at
the rest of America and my colleagues around this Chamber and say, Do
you like your cheap goods from Mexico right now when we have got high
inflation and we want to go attack China?
Guess what?
I-35 is shut down--shut down--until you secure the border of the
United States.
But I appreciate that the Governor's step is a step in that direction
to say, We are going to have vehicle inspections.
I hope they are long, slow vehicle inspections. I hope they cover
every car from beginning to end and take plenty of time doing it.
Secondly, using boats and having some sort of ability to deter
crossing, there was some plan to do that, I haven't read the details of
it. I hope it is sincere and robust.
And then the third part is what the gentleman from Virginia
mentioned, taking some of these who are dumped off by Border Patrol in
Texas, putting them on a bus, and shipping them to the front door of
this building. I support that.
There are a couple of caveats. There is one metric, and one metric
alone, that I will hold everybody in this Chamber accountable to, the
Governor of Texas accountable to, and the President of the United
States accountable to: Stop the flow now. That is your job.
[[Page H4426]]
That is your duty under the Constitution. That is what the law requires
you to do.
That is why we have the Secure Fence Act. That is why we have laws on
the books requiring you to follow the legal processes.
Do not allow the false name of asylum and compassion to be used as a
rule to swallow the constitutional duty to secure the border.
I would give the same speech to the Governor and to my colleagues in
the legislature in Texas: You have a duty to the people of Texas to
secure the border under Article 4. There is an invasion, and the
Federal Government is not doing its job. You have a duty to hold that
line.
So that is the metric by which we should grade the actions of the
Governor, the actions of this body, or the actions of the President.
I will see if the gentleman would agree.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Absolutely. And the four times that I have been
to the border in the last 15 months, I have never seen a Democrat
there. I have had Border Patrol, Texas State Police, sheriffs, and law
enforcement who are working there at the border--not just Texas, but
Arizona as well--where they tell me they never see Democrats at the
border.
We only need seven Democrats to join our discharge petition to get a
vote on maintaining title 42, but we can't get one Democrat, one
majority Member, to do this. One would hope that just in the States of
Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California--the border States--that we
could get, just in the State of Texas, in particular, that we could get
Democrats to say, Hey, don't mess with Texas.
We are going to join our fellow Republicans, and we are going to
support Texas' efforts to stand in the gap and do what the Federal
Government will not do in violation of the Constitution and protecting
the State from invasion.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my friend from Virginia
pointing this out.
Let me note that we are sitting here on April, I believe, 7--
actually, it is a couple of good friends of mine birthday. I am just
glad I said that out loud.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Happy birthday to my brother Steve who is 55
today, April 7.
Mr. ROY. I will not mention that these two guys happen to be known
publicly. They are a couple of twins who are good buddies of mine and
their birthday is today.
But I sit here, and I say on April 7, it was a year ago almost to the
day--I would have to go look at the date of the filing of our discharge
petition down at the desk here in the Chamber--that I filed on behalf
of us who wanted to do it.
Our friend Yvette Herrell had legislation to require the enforcement
of title 42, the health provision that allows you to turn people away
because of communicable diseases which, of course, we are dealing with
during COVID. She had a bill that she filed last February. Now, keep in
mind, that was only a month into the administration. But we knew full
well what was happening because immigrants were showing up to the
border with Joe Biden T-shirts and with ``thank you to President Joe
Biden'' shirts. So we knew what was coming. We knew that the Members of
this Chamber and Democrat friends in the administration would say: Oh,
well, I don't know if we need to use title 42 enforcement. I don't know
if we need to use migrant protection protocols and return to Mexico,
because, frankly, we knew they would be fine with a flood across our
border.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. That is right.
Mr. ROY. So we filed a discharge petition of that bill.
Now, I want a little history here for 1 minute. We introduced that
discharge petition, and we got our normal group of Members who like to
fight for freedom. We had 30 or 40 of us get on that discharge right
away. And then it was a slog. It was a slog for the better part of a
year. We tried in the summer, we got it to 75. We went on Tucker
Carlson. We said: Hey, here are the people who have signed it, and here
are the ones who haven't.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Naming names.
Mr. ROY. Suddenly, that list grew to 125.
Then what?
We went back on Tucker. We went back: Hey, here is what the list
number is.
Suddenly, that number grew to about 160. We got it up to 195, and
then it stalled. Then 2 weeks ago, when all of the title 42 news
started breaking that the CDC director in all her infinite wisdom--I'm
not going to go down that rabbit trail at the moment--and the
Department of Homeland Security Secretary said, Oh, yeah, we are not
going to do title 42 anymore.
All of a sudden, people around here said, Whoa, well, that will be a
thing.
I knew it was a thing a year ago, and my friend from Virginia knew it
was a thing a year ago. The gentleman has been to the border four times
in his brief tenure. I live 100 miles from the border. Well, my
District is 100 miles from the border.
So we get this discharge petition. Now, we have got it. We have got
210, I think--give or take one--signatures on that, all Republicans.
Not one Democratic colleague has yet to sign it.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Not one.
Mr. ROY. Yet there are four Democratic Senators--Senator Manchin,
Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Senator Jon Tester--who
have all said, Hey, we shouldn't be getting rid of title 42.
Can my friend from Virginia explain why not one Member, even from a
border State, of our Democratic colleagues will sign that discharge
petition?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. There is no excuse for it.
If this President was doing everything else right--just use your
imagination and just allow for a moment--if he was doing everything
else right and some of his other policies were working--let's pretend
some were working--what he has allowed to happen at the border as the
head of the Democratic Party, never in the history of the country has
our own President done more to intentionally harm the United States in
what he has done in his first year. So it is no wonder that not one
Democrat will join us in standing up for border security.
How did that become a partisan issue?
As you know, we were in an off-the-record meeting with Secretary
Mayorkas so I can't share what he said. I can share what I said.
I asked him: What is the end game?
Here we are going to take it from some 7,000 a day--it is estimated
18,000 a day--that means every 3 days you will have the equivalent
population of my home county, Campbell County, Virginia, 56,000 people,
in 3 days we will have that many illegal border crossings.
By the way, in my hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, right outside
Campbell County there, we just had a murder conviction of an MS-13 gang
member who came across illegally. Again, demonstrating that every town
is a border town under this President. Every State is a border State
under this President.
{time} 1400
I appreciate you leading on this issue, Mr. Roy, so passionately and
so consistently and so faithfully. Specifically, you helped lead that
letter that we sent to leadership of both the House and the Senate on
the Republican side, just 2 or 3 weeks ago, saying no Republican should
support any government funding that does not secure the border.
So what did we do with the potential leverage that we had that was
before us, if all Republicans would refuse to fund a government that
doesn't secure the border?
Mr. ROY. Well, like any good Republican Conference, we did nothing.
We did nothing. We let the moments of leverage just pass right on by
and did nothing.
Yet, I sat here on the floor, while I had some of my Republican
leadership colleagues saying: We got all this great stuff. Can you
believe what we got? We got the Hyde amendment.
You are supposed to get the Hyde amendment. It has been law for 35
years. Just because Democrats say they are not going to use it, you
say: Don't worry, we got the Hyde amendment, and then you pat yourself
on the back.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. $1.6 trillion, less than 1 percent of which was
for
[[Page H4427]]
Ukraine support. Some justified their vote for that because it was
supporting Ukraine. So 99 percent of the bill had nothing to do with
Ukraine. Yet, 54 Republicans, one-fourth of our body, voted against
that $1.6 trillion spending, with no leverage, no concessions, nothing
really gained. We didn't secure the border; we didn't end the vaccine
mandates; we didn't unleash American energy independence.
Mr. ROY. $1.6 trillion, $1 billion of plussed-up spending, $14
billion for Ukraine, without a single debate here on the floor of the
House about how much money we should spend and what we should get out
of it.
No change to the mandate of vaccines being stuck in the arms of our
men and women in uniform, Border Patrol, or the requirements for
healthcare workers. No change on border security, none; no requirements
whatsoever on border security. That is not getting a win.
Now, here we sit. The gentleman raised an important question.
We have got about 5 minutes, to be respectful of our friend from
Wisconsin's time.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Who also didn't vote for that bad bill, by the
way.
Mr. ROY. Correct, and he understands what the swamp is all about.
The gentleman brought up the impact--I think that this is one of most
important things we can say here in closing. The gentleman brought up
the impact in Lynchburg, Virginia. People think this is just a border
issue, and I come down here because it is Texas. Yeah, we are taking it
on the chin. I have ranchers who are crying. I have people who are
victims of crime. I have migrants in my district who are abused, all
under the false name of compassion, about open borders.
We have got to sit back and find dead bodies of migrants on ranches,
get a morgue brought down to put 115 dead bodies in, in one county. My
Democratic colleagues are like: Whatever. Who cares? It is just some
problem we have just got to deal with.
That is the reality. But it stretches throughout the country.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. That is right.
Mr. ROY. If the gentleman will oblige, if he agrees with these
numbers, we are looking at about a million illegal encounters in just 6
months of this year. We have seen more than six times as many daily
apprehensions since Mayorkas took office. In March alone, there were
97,000 southern border encounters, through half of the month. Of those,
51 percent were removed under title 42.
So it tells you half are being removed for title 42, and they are
about to end it. Mayorkas has used title 42 as the basis for almost
every one of those removed. So what would it look like, this past year,
without title 42? Title 42 has been used, I think the gentleman would
agree, more than 1.7 million times during this pandemic.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. That is right, for 2 years.
Mr. ROY. In fact, under Secretary Mayorkas at DHS, we have seen more
than 2.2 million encounters, and everyone who wasn't turned away under
title 42 was released.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Into the interior of the country.
Mr. ROY. That is 700,000 releases last year.
Now, what about this: In fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol
encountered 10,700 criminal noncitizens. 3,662 have been arrested thus
far in 2022. The combined timeframes include roughly 85 convictions of
manslaughter or homicide; 604 sexual offenses; almost 3,000 convictions
of illegal drug possession; and based on reports, at least 14 who are
on the terrorist watch list.
In just the first 5 months of fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol
encountered 525,000 people, other than Mexicans. In just the first 5
months of fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol encountered 421 Chinese
nationals. In just the first 5 months of fiscal year 2022, Border
Patrol encountered 7,191 Russians out on the southwest border.
I say all of that to say this: When we don't secure our border, when
we turn Border Patrol into a processing organization, we leave our
borders wide open for got-aways. Then we have dangerous narcotics and
fentanyl pouring into our communities, we have people dying, and we
have gangs.
Can the gentleman speak to the deaths and the gangs and the crime and
the impact in Virginia, 1,500-miles away from where we are even talking
about?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Yes. The illegal drugs that are pouring in
across the country, fentanyl and other dangerous drugs, at record
levels, is the reason why we had 100,000 overdose deaths last year in
this country. In 2021, the number one cause of death for individuals
between 18 and 45 was not COVID; it was overdose.
On the border trips that I have been on--again, a couple of those
with you--when you meet with the folks who live there, who live on the
front lines, and they talk about these illegals, they will find the
carpet shoes. We saw them. You see the carpet shoes and the camos. Once
they get picked up by their crime cartel contact and picked up to go
wherever they want to go in the interior of the country, you find the
carpet shoes and you find the camos left behind.
You will have those folks who live there tell you they are coming
onto their property, they are knocking on their doors, they are
threatening them and making demands of them. These folks who live on
the border are finding dead bodies. The previous trip I was on in
Arizona, they said they apprehended 30 Chinese nationals on their
property.
They are from 160 different countries, not just Central and South
America, as if that wasn't enough. But to your point, 160 different
countries are making every town a border town and every State a border
State.
It is a dereliction of duty on behalf of this President's
administration. It is a threat to the national security of our country,
to the sovereignty of our country, to the health and security of our
country, and to the financial security of our country. I appreciate
your leadership on this issue.
Mr. ROY. I thank the gentleman from Virginia. I am at just over 29
minutes, so I would tell the gentleman from Wisconsin that I am going
to wind down here in the next minute. I appreciate his time, his
leadership, and his indulgence.
I also want to thank the Speaker and the staff for being here while
we are continuing to talk about this important topic.
I will just close by saying, this is a massive national security
issue. This is a massive issue of the most important relevance to the
safety and well-being of the people that we represent.
Why this body is not engaged in just a complete, full, and robust
review, hearings, oversight, and legislation to ensure that we protect
the sovereignty of the United States and enforce the laws of the United
States, is beyond me.
The people's House has an obligation. Article I has an obligation to
check Article II and to demand that those executing the laws actually
do so.
I respectfully submit to the Speaker and to my colleagues on the
other of the aisle:
When are we going to do our job?
How many dead migrants found on ranches is enough?
How many dead Americans from fentanyl overdoses--fentanyl poisonings,
to be more accurate--is enough?
How much money flowing into the hands of dangerous cartel
organizations, transnational organizations, turning Mexico into a
narco-terror state, is enough?
How much do we have to suffer, as a people in this country, as a
State in Texas?
Again, the migrants who seek to come here are getting sold into the
sex trafficking trade, getting abused and dying in the heat along the
southern border, how much of that do we have to tolerate before my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle wake up?
Madam Speaker, I appreciate gentleman from Wisconsin for all that he
does in representing his constituents and for his indulgence.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would now like to address several
issues today and maybe give it a little bit of a different spin or a
little bit of different observations than people are getting from some
of the other congressmen.
I was glad today to vote to suspend normal trade relations with
Russia and, hopefully, reduce the number of oil imports we are getting
from that country.
[[Page H4428]]
Every day, you cannot help but be touched by the reports from Ukraine
and what is happening to the civilians there.
Nevertheless, I am a little bit concerned about the public statements
coming out of Washington. I believe we should all be working to end
this war and wind up with a free Ukraine.
Nevertheless, to end this war, we will eventually have to get to the
bargaining table, and I am afraid that statements being made by both
sides will make it more difficult to reach an end result. The sooner
the war ends, the more lives of Ukrainian troops will be saved, the
more lives of Ukrainian civilians will be saved, and, quite frankly,
the more lives of Russian troops will be saved.
To negotiate a final deal, both sides must realize and respect that
deal, and both sides must feel that they came out of the negotiation
with something.
I sure hope we are not in the current position we are right now 3 or
4 months from now. I would encourage all of my colleagues, and also the
President of the United States, when they make public statements, to
ask themselves: Are we getting closer to ending this war by my
statements, or are we not getting closer to ending this war?
I suppose politicians always think about politics. But I sometimes
think statements are made for political effect rather than reaching the
serious goal of ending this conflict.
I would also like to follow up on what is going on on the border and
the danger that we may soon end title 42. I think for the future of the
United States, the most important thing going on--what is going on in
Ukraine is important. The most important thing is what goes on at the
border.
We all know that around the time President Biden took office, about
20,000 people a month, and sometimes well under 20,000 people a month,
were crossing the border, for a variety of reasons. The major one is, I
think the current administration isn't really thrilled about enforcing
our laws. We have gone from having under 20,000 to 80,000 or 100,000
people a month cross our southern border, people who are not vetted,
people who we, in many cases, would not want here under any
circumstances.
There is a danger that in May, that 80,000 to 100,000 figure is going
to jump to 400,000 or 500,000 people a month. People are not being
vetted, and people are coming from all around the globe.
I will be there next week. When you get down there and you talk to
the Border Patrol, you will find people not only coming from Mexico but
more people from Central America, people from the Caribbean, people
from South America, people from sub-Saharan Africa, people from eastern
Europe, people from countries that are currently hostile to us are
being waved through after they get a minimal amount of paperwork. We do
not need to increase that to 300,000 or 400,000 or 500,000 people a
month.
The last time I was down there, I noticed that there were a lot of
photo IDs of people from Central America and South America being thrown
away before they checked in. What does that tell you? It means people
don't want us to know about their past. They are running away from
their past as they enter our country.
I remember the statement of John Adams: ``Our Constitution is only
fit for a moral and religious people.'' We have to make sure we are
getting a moral group of people crossing our southern border, not to
mention we have to make sure we are getting people who respect our
laws.
We, right now, swear in over 800,000 people from around the world
every year. That is fine. They are appropriately vetted. I encourage
all citizens to watch as people come here legally and are sworn in.
Our economy cannot accept another 400,000, and we know a given number
of these people, perhaps, have a criminal background and are not going
to help our country.
{time} 1415
Not to mention, no country as successful as ours, can accept an
unlimited number of people. We are not prepared for them. They have not
been adequately trained in the way of the American ideals, the
importance of our Constitution, why we have our Constitution.
Furthermore, having been down there, the more people you let in, the
more it strengthens the Mexican drug gangs, and those gangs make $3,000
or $5,000 or $9,000 or $20,000 per person who comes across here. We are
strengthening their power. We are making them wealthy. Why would we
want to expand the current fiasco south of the border?
Last time I was down there, the Border Patrol told me about fights
between Mexican and Chinese gangs on our side of the border. How do
these people from these gangs get here? They cross the border
illegally. Is it helpful for the United States to have open warfare
between Chinese and Mexican gangs? That is what we are getting more and
more.
Our poor, underappreciated Border Patrol, more shots directly at
them. And what does the administration do? Rather than strengthen the
border, we propose legislation giving them free college, college that
American citizens have to go $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000 in debt to
get.
Rather than hire more Border Patrol to enforce the border, we hire
more people to investigate the Border Patrol. I am not sure what
psychological problem we have going on here. It is the same
psychological problem that looks at, say, a city like Milwaukee that is
approaching 200 homicides a year, and saying we have to investigate the
police, or we have to make it easier to sue the police.
That same mindset at the southern border says we have 100,000 people
here who shouldn't come here every month? I know what we will do, we
will hire more people to investigate the Border Patrol and make sure
they are not doing anything wrong. They think the Border Patrol are the
bad people.
Another problem, and I don't know whether this has occurred to
President Biden's advisers, I don't know whether you wanted a war in
Ukraine, but I don't believe that war would have started if we wouldn't
have had an open borders policy. What do you think countries like Iran
or China, or Russia make of us having an open border and not enforcing
our border laws? Normal countries don't do that. They think it is
because we have such a weak President who will never do anything. It
invites trouble.
I have felt for a year-and-a-half or 2 years that the open borders
policy was inviting mischief; and that is what we have now, mischief
that I don't believe would have happened had we tried to enforce our
border laws.
Please, Mr. President, keep title 42. Fire the Vice President from
her position as border czar. That is another problem we have.
As mentioned, next week I will go and tour part of the border in San
Diego and Yuma. I have been in many other parts in the past. But I go
down there to learn more directly from the Border Patrol. As is common
from all agencies, you learn a lot more from the people doing the work
than the bureaucrats at the top, and I look forward to coming back and
reporting whatever grim statistics I gather from talking about the
Border Patrol and their suggestions to save our country.
I hope all Americans listening and paying attention are contacting
their Representatives and Senators about what is going on on the
border. I personally believe one of the reasons that President Biden is
threatening to remove title 42 is because the news is dominated with
what is going on in Ukraine, and now is the time you could get away
with really opening the floodgates. But if we are going to save our
country, we have to enforce the borders like we would in any normal
country.
By the way, an excuse for removing title 42 is saying that they feel
that COVID is no longer a threat. If you look, over 500 people a day on
most days are dying of COVID. It is still a problem. Right now, or at
least the last time I was down there, they didn't even feel they had
the legal ability to test people as to whether or not they had COVID.
As long as that situation is out there, I beg you to keep title 42 in
place. It is bad enough having 80,000 to 100,000 people crossing here
every month who we have not vetted.
The next crisis that I would like to address today is an ongoing
crisis. It has been a problem in this country for 50 years, but I think
things keep getting worse. And that is the decline in which Black Lives
Matter would refer to as the Western traditional family. Again and
again, bills are introduced
[[Page H4429]]
around here to provide benefits, and the traditional nuclear family is
left out of those benefits; be it an increase in the earned income tax
credit or flooding more money into low-income housing, increases in
food share, increases in Pell grants, increases in childcare.
All of these programs an average married couple are not eligible for
because in the traditional family, usually at least one parent and
sometimes two are working. In order to be eligible for these programs,
you have to put yourself in a position in which you are considered in
poverty, and if you are in poverty, you are eligible for governmental
assistance.
I had a woman in my district who had two children who were both
$30,000, $40,000 in debt from going to college complain why did her
sister's kids get free college while her own kids are stuck paying off
their debt? She was proud of her children; she was proud they were
current on their student loans, but it didn't seem right to her that
her niece, who was raised in a nontraditional family, or what Black
Lives Matter would consider a traditional family, her niece got free
college paid for by the government, whereas her kids had to work to pay
off the student loans.
I hope in the future, as we dole more money out of this place, we
stop discriminating against and showing hatred for the traditional
family. I will point out, that I think over time more and more
Americans are catching on to the idea that materially they can get
benefits that they wouldn't get if they didn't get married.
I will point out some statistics on SNAP benefits. Between 1996 and
2016, a 20-year gap--and these are both years in which the economy is
doing well, so I am comparing apples to apples--the number of people on
SNAP jumped up from about 25,000 to 44,000. Taking those two years,
about a 50 to 60 percent increase in the number of people on SNAP.
Now, we have to make sure people can eat. I realize all people can go
through a tough time in their lives, where there are some people who
may have mental problems or such, that makes it very difficult to hold
a job, but when you have a 50 to 60 percent increase in 20 years on the
number of people who have arranged their life that they are eligible
for SNAP, people better wake up because we are destroying the
traditional family in America.
I hope in the future the majority party, as they put together more
budgets, or if the Republicans ever get the majority, when they get the
majority, that they would begin to look at this problem. It is not a
new problem that gets press like a surge at the border will get press
or a disaster in Kyiv will get press, but it is an ongoing problem as
we eat away at the traditional nuclear family of this country, and it
is being eaten away by the programs that are passed by this Congress. I
hope if the Republicans take control, even though it is not a sexy
issue because it is an ongoing issue, I hope they do something about
this hatred or discrimination against the traditional family.
Now, I will make one more point, I make it as much as I can, before I
leave this podium today. One more time I am going to talk about vitamin
D. In part I am going to talk about it because there was an expert in
vitamin D who I ran into last night from Maryland who, again, brought
up that he felt he had a cocktail which was about 100 percent
successful in curing people from COVID if they get it.
If any of the Speaker's office is paying attention, I would be happy
to give them the name of this individual. Maybe it is something that
should be given to the Speaker.
But the new cocktail, in part, is based on substantial amounts of
vitamin D. A week and a half ago I talked to Dr. Dror of Israel who
commented on the importance of being vitamin D sufficient. In his
Israeli study, with a small number of people, he found that people who
were vitamin D deficient were 11 times as likely to die of COVID if
they were hospitalized as people who were not vitamin D deficient. He
was using a very low threshold, 20 nanograms per milliliter. Eleven
times more likely to die if you were vitamin D deficient.
I don't know what is wrong with our Department of Health and Human
Services on this. I talked to Secretary Becerra. It is something that
the American public should have been educated on 18 months ago. I
personally have known nine people who have died of COVID. I always
wonder how many of those would still be alive today if they had done
half as much to push vitamin D as they did with all the other
advertising, pushing masks, pushing social distancing, what have you.
But with 500 people dying a day, it is still something that should be
publicized. I have written a letter to Secretary Becerra; and 14 times
less likely to wind up with serious COVID once hospitalized. Among
people hospitalized, of the people who didn't have enough vitamin D--
under 20 nanograms--25 percent died. If they had over 20 nanograms, 2.3
percent died who wound up hospitalized in Israel. Kind of dramatic
numbers. News you can use.
Those are some of the comments or issues of the day that I think the
press should be paying attention to. I thank the indulgence of staff
for giving us the hour. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my
time.
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