[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 70 (Thursday, April 28, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H4603-H4606]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          CRISIS AT THE BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Jacobs of California). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee 
of the minority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Ellzey).


         Recognizing Midlothian Innovative Learning Experience

  Mr. ELLZEY. Madam Speaker, I come before the House of Representatives 
to recognize the Midlothian Innovative Learning Experience, or MILE, as 
the nonprofit of the year in 2021 for the city of Midlothian, Texas.
  This is a state-of-the-art educational facility that is providing 
high school students with additional learning pathways throughout the 
community. Nonprofits are a fundamental part of America, and I thank 
Midlothian Innovative Learning Experience for their dedication to 
teaching the future generation.
  It is important that we bring awareness to career and technical 
education so that people can learn about many different professions at 
a younger age. Career and technical education is a perfect way for 
students to apply what they are taught in school to a real-world 
environment.
  MILE offers five career and technical education pathways: culinary 
arts, entrepreneurship, civil engineering, aerospace engineering, and 
cybersecurity. These programs provide students the opportunity to 
utilize industry-standard equipment and practices they have shown an 
interest in.
  This unique learning space is able to replicate scenarios found in a 
professional, real-world working atmosphere. With the support from 
industry professionals, MILE is able to thrive and partner with 
Midlothian Independent School District.
  It is an honor to represent this group of mentors who help contribute 
to the outstanding education found all around Texas' Sixth District. I 
thank them for all they do.


             Recognizing Orise Kopnak on Her 100th Birthday

  Mr. ELLZEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Orise Kopnak, 
who just celebrated her 100th birthday.
  Twice a week, this Waxahachie, Texas, resident volunteers at Baylor 
Scott & White hospital to volunteer in the day surgery department 
waiting room. Since 2014, she has logged more than 2,400 hours of her 
personal time to encourage, serve, and assist people who are waiting 
for a loved one to come out of surgery.
  Orise's faithfulness to stand with the families, friends, and 
caregivers of patients during anxious and often difficult circumstances 
is a testament to her character. Even during a pandemic, Orise 
continued to volunteer.
  People like Orise Kopnak represent everything that is good about our 
country. America was built on the volunteer principle. It has been 
instrumental in our Nation's advancement and made us, as Americans, a 
strong and self-reliant people.
  Ronald Reagan once said the volunteer spirit is the engine that 
drives the whole history of the United States. It is an extra dimension 
of faith, friendship, and brotherhood that makes us good neighbors and 
good people and made America a great country.
  I thank Orise for showing us how it is done. There is a reason her 
generation has been dubbed the Greatest Generation. May God bless her 
as she continues to carry out one of life's greatest causes: serving 
others.


                        Recognizing Demond Davis

  Mr. ELLZEY. Madam Speaker, I take this time to recognize one of my 
constituents, Ellis County Sheriff's Deputy Demond Davis.
  Deputy Davis was new to the sheriff's force when he responded to a 
10-200, which is a drug-related incident. Once he arrived, he witnessed 
a drug overdose. The individual was struggling, barely breathing, and 
his conditions were intensifying. Deputy Davis rushed to help and 
quickly administered Narcan nasal spray.

[[Page H4604]]

  According to the account, the individual immediately started coming 
to. They were transported to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in 
Waxahachie, where they received additional medical attention.
  Deputy Davis' actions ensured another person did not fall victim to 
the opioid epidemic. Ellis County Sheriff Brad Norman awarded the Life-
Saving Award commendation and pin to Deputy Davis for his heroic 
actions.
  Drug overdoses, especially from fentanyl, have become more prevalent 
in the U.S. Deputy Davis and his fellow law enforcement officers are 
our front line in responding to this terrible crisis. We cannot thank 
our law enforcement and first responders enough. America needs more 
heroes like Deputy Demond Davis.


                     Congratulating Timothy Redhair

  Mr. ELLZEY. Madam Speaker, I rise to honor and congratulate a 
resident of Waxahachie, Texas, Timothy Redhair, who was promoted to the 
rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve this month.

  Colonel Redhair has a long and distinguished career in the military 
while also being a steward of our community.
  As a lieutenant colonel, he commanded the 2nd Battalion, 132nd 
Infantry Regiment of the Texas Army National Guard and later had the 
opportunity to lead the Headquarters Battalion of the Texas Army 
National Guard's 36th Infantry Division.
  During the height of the pandemic, Colonel Redhair deployed with his 
division to Kuwait. After returning from the Middle East, Timothy 
joined the Army Reserve, where he serves as the emergency preparedness 
liaison officer for Texas.
  When Colonel Redhair isn't protecting our community, he spends his 
time as an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 520, Circle Ten Council of 
the Boy Scouts of America, where he trains young men and women to 
become our future leaders.
  This commitment to our country and our community is outstanding, and 
I am glad to see such a worthy member of our community receive this 
honor.
  I thank Colonel Redhair again for his service and congratulate him on 
his well-deserved promotion.

                              {time}  1645


                         In Support of Ukraine

  Mr. ELLZEY. It has been over 2 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. 
We are witnessing a war crime forced upon the people of Ukraine.
  But from this tragedy we have seen great strength from the Ukrainian 
people, as well as a great deal of kindness and support from our fellow 
Americans.
  In fact, throughout Texas District Six, you will see support with 
Ukrainian flags being flown and people donating their time to help the 
people of Ukraine. For example, Waxahachie's very own Gregg Burdette 
went with a nine-person team from Texas Baptist Men to assist with 
Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
  Gregg's team spent 10 days volunteering in shelters and receiving and 
sorting donated materials. With volunteers from all over the world, 
they were able to help many families and children get food, supplies, 
and a good night's rest.
  Gregg is not the only District Six native giving aid to Ukraine. 
Surepoint Medical Centers, a local free-standing emergency room chain 
based out of Mansfield, Texas, donated their own medical supplies to 
aid the people of Ukraine.
  With the help of many District Six residents who work for Surepoint, 
they were able to send critical medical supplies that included 
tourniquets, bandages, and various other lifesaving items.
  I am proud of the work and kindness not just from the people of 
District Six, but everyone else who has donated any time, supplies, or 
sent prayers to the Ukrainian people in their time of need.
  My friend from Arizona, I appreciate you yielding me time.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I am going to do something this 
evening that isn't sort of traditional for me because I mostly do 
economics. I tried to do that circle of how everything ties together, 
and I accept I get a little geeky. For those who are trying to keep an 
eye on the history of our words, wave at me if I start speaking too 
fast because I have had a lot of coffee today.
  Today, I am going to try to talk about what I saw on the border last 
week, but I am going to try to do it in a slightly different way. You 
have had lots of us come up here--and I am going to do part of it; I am 
going to show the boards and the numbers and all that.
  In economics, there is this concept of a second-degree effect, a 
third-degree effect. I wish I could come up with a definition for a 
misery effect. The fact of the matter is, let's pretend it is really 
done out of compassion. Let's pretend our brothers and sisters on the 
left, this administration, their approach to the border is because they 
are heartfelt, and they believe this is kind and compassionate. My 
argument here is going to be really simple: Please think through your 
definition of ``compassion.''
  Now that we know there are functionally 700 migrants who have lost 
their lives trying to cross the river, or when I was with the Border 
Patrol last Wednesday in Yuma, Arizona, and the Border Patrol agent, 
she was telling me of the heartbreak of finding a couple of children 
dead in the desert just a few hundred yards from the border, how can 
that be our definition of ``compassion''?
  And then we are going to have to walk through the reality of the 
misery you have brought to my State, my community.
  Last Thursday, we did a roundtable with the true experts in our 
community in regard to fentanyl and drug use. I was sitting next to a 
mother who lost her teenage son by taking a single pill.
  You have us come here and talk about the fentanyl crisis. Do you 
understand the scale?
  Phoenix has functionally become the distribution hub of North 
America. One of the reasons--and I am going try to show it in the 
numbers here. When the border is just crowded with populations coming 
across it--and I stood there for a good 3 minutes, and there were 30-
something people coming across the border. Over here were some other 
migrants crossing over the dam. Over here is the Border Patrol agent 
saying, I am in the concierge business. I basically take people, I walk 
them over to the trucks, and we take them to processing, and when we do 
that, whole sections over here on the border are left unmanned.
  Then you wonder why a sergeant who is a Phoenix police officer, my 
neighbor and friend, tells me a year ago it cost about $112 for some 
poor soul to get high for the day. Today it is $12.
  If you believe in basic economics, when the price crashes by 112 to 
12, do you understand the depravity, the cruelty that Democrats' 
definition of ``compassion'' has brought to our own communities?
  I will try to do this--and I have done a version of this before--you 
have got to think of the effects of the policy that the left is engaged 
in. When you open up the borders, you get more drugs. If you get more 
drugs, you are getting more homeless. If you are getting more homeless, 
you have increased crime. And then you have deaths.
  How many people in the last day or so have come behind these 
microphones and said, Well, according to the latest statistics, we have 
112 Americans who died of fentanyl that we know of. Well, our problem 
in the Phoenix area is not only fentanyl, it is meth, and it is other 
things.
  How do I get the left to be willing to understand, if you love and 
care about people, your version of compassion is cruel?
  So let's actually walk through some of the obvious, and then try to 
add a little bit of color and see if we can make this sort of come 
together as an understanding.
  First, let's just do the basic math. We are being told, Hey, we are 
heading in this fiscal year already to almost a million people.
  I had the experience last Wednesday of standing there. I have some 
distant relatives who do some farming down in the Yuma area, so I am an 
Arizonan, and I am at the border dozens of times.
  I went and visited the Border Patrol station, and I know some of the 
folks there, and I saw the faces of individuals who feel like they have 
just been crushed. They are law enforcement, and they are not able to 
protect the

[[Page H4605]]

border because they are functionally in the people management business. 
They are taking people here and moving them over here so they can be 
processed, so they can be let go, so they can get a return order 6 
years from now. This is what is going on.

  Then they turn to you and say, I am here to stop drugs and weapons 
and potentially horrible people, terrorists, coming across our border, 
and I am now functionally in the human transportation business. That is 
what we have turned our Border Patrol into.
  Then you meet with some of the Customs and Border Protection 
officials, and they say, Yes, you know, fentanyl may be coming right 
through the borders, but they only have to go several hundred yards 
that way and there is no more Border Patrol because all of them are 
taking care of people; you can just walk across.
  Somewhere here I am going to try to do the other part of the 
discussion, where we talk about potentially if that is a million in the 
first half of the year, is it a couple million? Will the left have an 
honest discussion with us of why their version of compassion has a 
level of human exploitation that is really uncomfortable to talk about?
  The agent I was standing there with turns to me and says, You 
understand most of these people who are walking across right now are 
going to spend the next few years of their life paying off the cartels, 
those are the costs that they had to commit to to cross the border.
  If they can't pay it off with a job that they are not allowed to 
have, do they have to pay it off with their body?
  Do they have to pay it off with smuggling, moving narcotics?
  Is anyone here willing to take a step back from sort of the 
radicalized ideology and say this is not compassion, this is cruelty?
  We are functionally in the business of human exploitation right now, 
that is our border policy. Yet, when we see numbers of border 
encounters have increased 278 percent, it is just another guy coming 
behind the microphone here and sounding like an accountant on steroids.
  These are people. And is it enough that several hundred of them will 
die at the border?
  Is it enough that many of them are going to have to engage in 
activities that are just absolutely exploitive to pay off the coyotes?
  Is it enough that the cartels are now said to be making billions of 
dollars on human smuggling? And they are using that money now to 
actually build their own little factories, so they can make the 
precursor chemicals for fentanyl and synthetic opioids because it is 
cheaper than getting them imported from China?
  We financed their Industrial Revolution.
  Think about this: The left says, Well, inflation, these things are 
supply chains. Well, dammit, they did a great job. We solved the cartel 
supply chain. We financed them enough so now they can make their own 
drugs from precursor chemicals all the way up to stamping the pill. You 
have got to think about those second-degree, third-degree effects of 
misery that really crappy policy brings.
  Why have there been so many on the right and now a handful of 
Democrats--who are obviously concerned about their elections and 
realizing what they have embraced, but they are not willing to sign the 
discharge petition on title 42--why are so many of us talking about 
this: The Border Patrol--if you have an honest conversation with them--
will turn to you and say, We are maxed out. And if you double the 
populations that are approaching the border because you functionally 
have removed title 42 so they don't get sent back, they get processed, 
it is no longer being overwhelmed, it is just a catastrophe. There 
functionally will be no protection on our border, and once again, U.S. 
policy is functionally financing the cartels. Congratulations.
  The misery, the murders, the exploitation, which is U.S. policy. That 
is functionally what we have done here, but you did it in the name of, 
Well, this was compassionate. It is an amazing definition of 
``compassion.''
  Now, let's actually get to some other bits of misery. This number is 
a fraud. The reason this fentanyl number is--saying we have had 133 
percent increase of capturing, collecting, stopping fentanyl at the 
border--when you meet with law enforcement down on the border they say 
most people we can't catch; we are too busy taking care of these 
million--now 2 million potentially--people crossing the border.
  What a great system.
  Let's see. The cartels get to march people to the border. They may 
get a few thousand bucks a head, so they get financed there. And 
because Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection are 
overwhelmed, it creates these massive openings where you can just move 
lots of narcotics across the border.
  And here is what should be ripping your hearts apart: I got to sit 
next to a mom who told the story of her teenage son taking a single 
pill, a single pill that was stamped as something completely different, 
and 2 hours later that mom didn't have a son anymore.
  In Arizona, 95 percent of our kids that died in the previous year--
out of the 60 who died, 57 of them were from these fentanyl pills. Is 
there any love and compassion and caring for these moms that have lost 
their children? What is going on here?
  Is the ideology of this administration of the Democrats here in the 
House, are they so radically calcified that the definition of 
``compassion'' is the death of 57 Arizonan children? Is that really 
where they are at? Because that is the outcome.
  I don't know how else to humanize this story, but this is what we 
have done. Yet, now we see some of our brothers and sisters on the 
left, once again, saying, Well, we are actually concerned now, too. But 
you notice they won't come sign the actual piece of legislation so we 
can vote on it to actually stop that increase.

                              {time}  1700

  Forgive me, I can't stop myself with the charts.
  Part of it, when you start seeing the explosion of increase--and it 
is Arizona, it is my community that is the one that is crushed--when 
you start seeing Arizona having a 79.5 percent increase in, 
functionally, fentanyl pills crossing our border, and that is what is 
captured.
  Remember, I mentioned before I did the ride-along with the Phoenix 
police sergeant? And in parts of the discussion he was saying, Yeah, it 
is about $12 now for that heartbreaking, homeless person there sleeping 
in that alley to get high for the day.
  That is what we have done.
  We have ZIP Codes now, I am being told, that the homelessness has 
doubled in the last year.
  And what is the consistent policy thing that happened in the last 
year? The Democrats opened up the border.
  So let's play economist for a moment.
  What are the couple of things you do to make the working poor and the 
poor, to make their life more miserable?
  Okay. Inflation. We have done a great job at that.
  Remember, one year ago, March, we functionally dropped another $1.9 
trillion on the economy. You look at the charts and, boom, there goes 
inflation. My community had functionally a 10.9 percent inflation 
increase. I represent the community that had the highest growth of 
inflation year to year.
  Do you know how many people no longer can afford their apartment--
functionally, can't afford?
  You are crushing the working poor.
  But you can do more. You can open up the border. And this was 
actually left-wing economists that wrote these papers about 10 years 
ago. If you want to crush the working poor, import millions of people 
with similar skill sets.
  So one of the classic definitions of the profile of someone as 
working poor is they may not have finished high school, but they are 
selling their labor. They are out there hanging drywall, working their 
hearts out, they are trying to find a way to get out. And now they are 
going to compete against who knows how many people who are going to 
work in the underground economy.
  You have added millions of people with similar skill sets.
  So how are they going to get the money to pay off their smugglers? 
Don't you think they are going to be coming in the back door saying, I 
will work for cash; I will do this and that?
  Now you have other things that make the poor poorer: Crime, drugs,

[[Page H4606]]

someone stealing their stuff because they need money. And you look at 
all those numbers. The Democrats are in their, what? Now, 15 months of 
control. Every single number. Income inequality, the poor getting 
poorer, misery, death, retirees getting poorer, the middle class 
getting poorer.
  Great job, guys. Great job.
  Tell me something you have done that hasn't increased misery in this 
country.
  I know this is uncomfortable, but I am doing it on purpose. Sometimes 
the smartest thing is to just stop what you are doing. Take a breath. 
Maybe the ideology is a false ideology. Back up.
  I am sorry the former President was into border security. But do you 
remember a decade and a half ago when it was the hallmark of Democrats 
that were concerned about illegal immigration?
  Do you remember it was Republicans and Chambers of Commerce that 
wanted to flood the country with cheap labor?
  Isn't it amazing what happened here?
  It was only about 15 years ago that the left were the protectors of 
working men and women.
  We will not flood the country with cheap labor.
  We need our folks to be able to have a working wage.
  Oh, we are going to open the border now because it is compassionate, 
and we are going to screw up everyone's life.
  What happened?
  When did the Democrats abandon the middle class, the working poor? Is 
it they weren't voting for them enough?
  It is about the math. Now, we are moving beyond pounds, we are 
heading towards tonnage in the amounts of fentanyl coming through my 
State.
  Let's put this in context.
  You see this little picture right here, those few crystals there? 
That functionally is enough to kill you. So that is a penny. Those? 
That kills you.
  When does this become terrorism? Because it is already functionally 
killing our children.
  Does anyone care?
  Now, we have got to go just a little bit further down the rabbit 
hole.
  The border agents report over a thousand percent increase, and these 
are the ones in Texas. The argument I was given by our friends at 
Customs and Border Patrol is they are not catching much of it.
  But it goes further. You have got to understand what has been 
happening in my community. This is just one of a dozen headlines when 
there is a bust and it is enough to functionally kill every single 
person in my State.
  There was a bust the night before we did our fentanyl roundtable. 
There was enough to kill everyone in my county, and I have the third or 
fourth most populous county in the Nation.
  Do you understand the scale? When you have the experts here saying, 
Well, David, you don't understand. Prices have so crashed, a couple of 
years ago it would be several dollars a pill. Now it might be, at 
wholesale, 45 cents a pill. When it gets that cheap, you want to try to 
understand why it is in your elementary schools, your high schools, 
throughout your community, and the homeless campuses.
  That is the cascade effect.
  So I'm begging the majority to just take a breath for a moment, back 
away from the radicalized ideology and just take a breath and say, Do 
you actually love and care about people?

  Will you accept the misery, the death, just the dystopian devastation 
that is happening in our communities right now because of an open-
border policy? That is what it is.
  And title 42 is not a solution. It is just trying to stop the 
catastrophe.
  Sign the discharge petition. Prove that your rhetoric actually fits 
reality.
  Or maybe the constituencies are now so gerrymandered and 
intellectually calcified that you can't tell the truth.
  Another chart that absolutely proves we have turned, functionally, 
our legal apparatus to protect the Nation into, functionally, a 
transportation service, ICE. Immigration enforcement is, functionally, 
beyond the border in our communities. Those who got through, who were 
not stopped, it is up to law enforcement.
  How do you catch someone and functionally remove them from the 
country?
  You see where we were in 2019. And then you see where we were in 
2020. And do you see the crash over here? These deportations?
  Now, what is fascinating is this line way up here was actually even 
further up during the Obama administration.
  Did the left basically just crash this because the last President was 
so hated by the left for protecting working men and women that if he 
said it is Black, you had to say White? You had to walk away from it?
  We would be elated to get back to the actual law enforcement 
protection of the border numbers that were there during the Obama 
administration.
  There is this weird irony, and I just show this so folks understand 
the bizarreness of Democrat management leadership of this government 
right now.
  So illegal immigration goes up--well, it is not immigration, it is 
illegal captures at the border, presentations, those things--278 
percent.
  But legal, if the person had just got their Ph.D. in electrical 
engineering at ASU and they can't process the paperwork, legal 
immigration has crashed. So at the same time we get the complaints from 
businesses that they can't hire anyone, that we need talent to grow the 
economy.
  As you saw the brilliance today, GDP actually fell pretty 
substantially in the last quarter. Yay, Democrats are doing a great 
job.
  One of the factors of economic growth is when you bring in smart 
people. Well, that has crashed but we are imparting massive numbers of 
poverty into the country. That is the left's version of compassion.
  I accept that some of this presentation is a little bit on the 
aggressive, maybe slightly jerky side, but I don't have another way to 
basically say, Is this really the Democrats' vision of America?
  Is this really how you think we are going to make poor people less 
poor, the working poor more prosperous, the middle class much more 
prosperous?
  The thought experiment is very simple. Anyone out there, contact my 
office with something, give me a single thing in the last 15 months of 
absolute Democrat control of this Congress, this government, that the 
left has done that has turned out to actually be good for America, good 
for working people, good for poor people. You have made rich people a 
lot richer. Isn't that amazing?
  Income inequality was shrinking dramatically in 2018, 2019, and the 
first quarter of 2020.
  Pandemic; Democrats take over--boom. All the things they told us that 
they cared about basically have gone to crap. And the math is the math. 
But as you all know, we work in a math-free zone.
  And maybe at some point we will tie our hearts, our compassion, to 
the actual facts. And when we do that, the really bad things that this 
Congress and this White House are doing to the American people will 
stop.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________