[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 8, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H5337-H5338]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE CRISIS AT THE BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOYCE of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, this past week, I joined a 
group of 12 of my colleagues to visit our southern border and to see 
firsthand the crisis that President Biden's open border policies have 
created.
  What we saw were massive gaps in our border wall that allow for the 
cartels to traffic money, drugs, and human beings across our southern 
border. The Border Patrol agents whom we spoke with told us that in the 
Rio Grande sector that they are encountering nearly 10,000 migrants 
each month.
  In the past year Border Patrol agents have apprehended people from 
174 nations attempting to cross our border. And even more troubling, 
they have encountered 42 individuals on the terrorist watch list.
  According to Border Patrol data, over 1,200 pounds of fentanyl were 
seized in the month of April alone, and at a time when we have just 
seen over 100,000 Americans killed by drug overdoses, this spike in 
fentanyl trafficking has made each and every State a border State.
  It is time to address this crisis. It is time to finish our border 
wall--a wall that President Biden has refused to complete while $350 
million of unused border wall rust away underneath the Texas sun.
  In his budget for this year, Joe Biden doesn't even mention the 
crisis on the border. Instead of giving our Border Patrol agents the 
tools that they need, President Biden has proposed to cut $800 million 
from the Department of Homeland Security budget. If President Biden 
were to visit the border, he would see this crisis firsthand. But, 
instead, he has chosen to hide from the problem and continue to allow 
deadly drugs to flow into our communities and kill our citizens.
  The American people can't afford to wait any longer. It is time for 
the

[[Page H5338]]

President to order the completion of the border wall and finally--
finally--keep all Americans safe.

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