[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 149 (Thursday, September 14, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4301-H4302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         BIDEN'S BORDER CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
New York (Ms. Malliotakis) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about how the crisis 
created at our border by President Biden's executive orders is 
affecting my city and also the Senate's refusal to pass H.R. 2, the 
border security act that we passed in May.
  In addition, it is only exacerbated by Mayor Eric Adams' insistence 
that these individuals who enter our country are entitled to free 
housing at taxpayer expense. New York City has now over 200 shelters 
and is housing more illegal immigrants than actual citizens of New 
York.
  Not all of these individuals are innocent asylum seekers. Let's be 
honest and let's be clear. First of all, many of them are using the 
generosity of this country to gain entry. We know that more than half, 
between 50 percent and two-thirds, of these individuals are denied 
their asylum cases when they come to court. There are also many who 
have already been arrested for committing crimes in our community.
  At just one of the 205 migrant shelters, the Roosevelt Hotel, there 
have been dozens of arrests, mostly for domestic violence, robberies, 
and assaulting police officers, as well. Earlier this year, four 
individuals that were housed at the Watson Hotel were arrested for 
shoplifting tens of thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise from 
Macy's at Roosevelt Field Mall.
  Just this week, an illegal immigrant, who was previously released 
from Customs and Border Protection and the New York State Police was 
arrested for a murder on September 2. He was in our country and on our 
streets, despite having a warrant out for his arrest for a previous 
stabbing.
  There were two individuals who are accused of sexual assault in Erie 
County in western New York. Even the Erie

[[Page H4302]]

County executive, an elected Democrat, has had enough of what is going 
on, demanding that Mayor Adams pause putting more of these asylum 
seekers in his community until these security threats are addressed.
  Now, this Monday, we marked 22 years since the 9/11 attacks. 
Democrats and Republicans say, ``never forget,'' yet here we are in a 
situation with an open border that just in the first 10 months of this 
fiscal year, 146 people who appeared on the FBI terror watch list were 
apprehended at our southern border. Combined with the last fiscal year, 
we are talking about 250 individuals.
  What we should be more concerned about, however, are the 1.7 million 
individuals who are the got-aways, meaning they had zero interaction 
with our law enforcement or our government. They are in the interior of 
the country. We don't know who they are. We don't know where they are. 
We don't know what their intentions are. That is the estimate that CBP 
is saying.
  Yes, we have had millions of people cross our border, but guess what? 
There are 1.6 million of them who we don't know who they are or what 
their intentions are. This should be concerning, considering that the 
FBI has just confirmed that ISIS is smuggling Uzbek asylum seekers 
across our southern border. An Iranian national was caught in the 
interior after Iran has threatened revenge and harsh retaliation 
against the United States, and they said they are going to conduct 
terrorism on our soil. Yes, the same Iran that Joe Biden just gave $6 
billion to.
  More than 107,000 Americans died from overdoses last year, and two-
thirds of those deaths are attributed to mostly fentanyl. The DEA 
recently made over 3,000 arrests of drug cartel networks operating 
right here in the United States of America thanks to Joe Biden's open 
border. The deaths are equivalent to a commercial airline crashing 
every single day.
  I ask my colleagues on the Senate side: When are you going to pass 
our H.R. 2, our border security act? If the President is not going to 
undo his executive orders, we need to take action. The House passed it. 
Unfortunately, I think every Democrat in this Chamber voted against it. 
Let's see the Senate do its job and pass H.R. 2. If the President is 
not going to undo the crisis that he created, then we must do it for 
him.

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