[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 186 (Thursday, November 9, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H5666-H5667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1130
                     REPORTING ON BORDER CROSSINGS

  (Mr. GROTHMAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I request the press corps one more time 
that sometime, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps sometime next week, to release 
the new numbers of people coming

[[Page H5667]]

across our southern border, what we sometimes refer to as illegal 
aliens.
  It is a story the press should never get tired of reporting, but 
apparently, they are. I remind them that every month lately 230,000 
people cross our border, about 11 times the number of people who were 
crossing the border a little over 2 years ago. Of those, 70,000 are 
got-aways, which means they don't even go through the perfunctory 
checking in that you do if you ask for asylum. About 9,000 are 
unaccompanied minors.
  It seems to me, about 5 years ago we were screaming bloody murder 
about families being torn apart when people were held apart from their 
parents who were breaking the law for just a couple weeks. Here we have 
9,000 people who are permanently coming across the border without their 
parents, and apparently, we don't even care. Indeed, the Biden 
administration has stopped asking for DNA tests to sometimes see if 
they are related.
  We are told by the Border Patrol that the people coming across are 
more aggressive than they have been in the past.
  No issue is more important than this. If the press corps is on the 
ball in this country, we should be reporting every day, every week, the 
number of people coming across the border, as well as the countries 
they are coming across from.

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