[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 6 (Thursday, January 11, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H93-H99]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, in Washington, every time that you think you 
have seen it all and heard it all, you couldn't be surprised, amazed, 
disappointed, what have you, more than you already are, but it never 
fails to deliver.
  I am going to talk about a few things this evening. I am going to 
start with this. I am a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I 
just attended a hearing on the Afghan reconstruction after withdrawal, 
so to speak.
  So we left, as you know, Mr. Speaker, Afghanistan. Our Nation left 
there in a bit of a hurry. We won't get into that much, but what I do 
want to talk about is where we stand at this point because whether or 
not the American people know it, we are still spending billions of 
dollars in Afghanistan. So we had a hearing today to talk about that.
  We have spent a couple of billion dollars. Now, at the same time we 
are spending billions of dollars in aid in Afghanistan where the 
Taliban rules, we have got a guy named Ryan Corbett who has been 
detained and held in Afghanistan wrongly by the Taliban. They are 
holding him hostage apparently among other Americans and Westerners who 
are being held hostage in Afghanistan. In spite of this, we are giving 
them billions of dollars in aid.

  Now, the gentleman who came to talk to us is the Special 
Representative for Afghanistan and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for 
the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at the U.S. State 
Department. His name is Thomas West. He came to speak to us and answer 
questions about that.
  I asked him: Well, how are we leveraging these billions of dollars to 
get Ryan Corbett out? Why would we give billions of dollars to this 
country?
  We just had a 20-year war with them, and, unfortunately, the United 
States left without winning the war because the Taliban is now in 
charge.
  I said: We give them a couple billion dollars a year here.
  He said: Well, it doesn't go through the Taliban, it goes through 
nongovernmental organizations.
  That is a whole other story that we will get into, but the point is 
that we have American hostages in Iran--correction--Afghanistan. That 
is a Freudian slip because Iran is on my mind, too. That is another 
problem. However, we will stick to Afghanistan for a minute.
  It seems to me that if they want a couple of billion dollars--let's 
be clear. We are $34 trillion in debt right now. We just went to 34, 
and by May of this year, we will be at 35. We are going to pay $1 
trillion in interest this year. That is no new tanks, that is no new 
social programs, and that is no new missiles. That is just interest. 
That is paying for money that has already been spent, and now that you 
have borrowed it, you get nothing for the $1 trillion.
  So it is a long way from $1 trillion to a couple of billion dollars 
in Afghanistan, but those couple of billion over time add up, and the 
people whom I am representing are paying for that.
  First of all, they paid a couple of trillion dollars for the war in 
Afghanistan for 20 years, and now we are paying billions more for what?
  I said: When are you going to use your leverage to get this guy, Ryan 
Corbett, out?
  In the course of the hearing, we learned about Afghan women and 
children, little girls, who can't go to school. They are oppressed, and 
the women can't leave their house, they can't get an education, and 
they can't work. They are being oppressed as we knew the Taliban was 
going to do. We told everybody that that is what is going to happen if 
you leave the Taliban in charge.

                              {time}  1800

  One of the folks on the dais asked one of these poor panelists: What 
are you doing about the mental health state of these Afghan women? They 
are depressed because of the circumstances they are in.
  There was a lot of conversations about, well, we talk to them, and we 
are trying to work with them, and so on and so forth. I am listening to 
this like my head is going to explode.
  When it was my turn to ask questions, I said: This poor woman here 
can't help these people, these women and children in Afghanistan, the 
lady that was sitting there testifying.
  Afghanistan is a terrorist superstate, Mr. Speaker. It is a terrorist 
superstate with multiple terrorist organizations operating in the 
country with impunity.
  We are spending a couple billion dollars there, and we are asking 
people who we are paying what they are doing about the mental health 
and depression standards of Afghanistan women and children. How absurd 
can this be?
  I asked Mr. West if he could talk to me about the open-source 
reporting. Open source is not classified. That is what you can read in 
the newspaper, see on the TV, hear on the radio about this guy, Abdul 
Rasheed Munib, who reportedly traveled to North Korea to obtain nuclear 
weapons technology and collaborate with North Korea. What can he tell 
me about that?
  He couldn't tell me anything about that because he didn't know 
anything about that. He had never heard of that, yet I see it on open-
source reporting.
  Shouldn't he know about that? He is the Special Representative for 
Afghanistan and Deputy Assistant Secretary. He should know.
  I asked him about open-source reporting about the Taliban trying to 
take Pakistan's nuclear weapons. I would think that nuclear weapons in 
the Middle East with a rogue regime like the Taliban would be a 
security concern for the United States of America. I asked: What is the 
endgame to this billions of dollars going to Afghanistan? What is the 
mission? When does it end? Does it ever end?
  Of course, I got some kind of long-winded answer that is circular and 
never gets anywhere. I asked: What is our national security interest in 
Afghanistan at this point?
  He said: We have spent $2 trillion there over the last 20 years.
  I said: Stop. Please don't tell me we are spending billions of 
dollars to secure the $2 trillion that we spent during our 20 years in 
Afghanistan because--I have bad news for everybody--it is gone. The 
money is gone.
  Mr. Speaker, this is just another example of the fantasy land that is 
Washington, D.C., because the Taliban is in charge in Afghanistan after 
kicking the United States of America out after America spent $2 
trillion there--forget the $2 trillion, a couple thousand lives in 
Afghanistan. Here today, in 2024, you are going to be expected to spend 
a couple billion dollars more in Afghanistan.
  Mr. Speaker, this can't continue. I will bet one thing, though. I 
will bet the Taliban controls Afghanistan's border. I bet they do. I 
will bet if somebody tries to get into Afghanistan that doesn't belong 
there, I bet the Taliban doesn't allow that.
  I will move on to the next subject, which I think we are going to 
spend the bulk of the time on, which is the southern border of the 
United States of America.
  Now, I am not advocating to hire the Taliban to come patrol the 
southwestern border of the United States of America, but it seems to me 
that we could certainly do a better job.
  We just recently took a trip--and I say ``we,'' Members of Congress, 
only on this side of the aisle. The other side of the aisle doesn't 
care to see what is happening on the border. I know some of them go as 
a token trip so they can act like they care about it.
  While I am on that subject about caring about it, we are hearing 
today, in the last couple of days, about people here illegally in the 
United States of America residing in the State of New York. They moved 
them into a school and kicked the kids out of the school. The people in 
New York and the leadership of New York are saying this has to end. 
This is a crisis.
  One of the States, I think, just declared an emergency. This is a 
crisis. We need resources. We need to deal with all these people who 
are here illegally. They are here, and we don't have what we need to 
deal with them.
  Do you know what I am waiting to hear? It is quiet here on the floor, 
but I am waiting to hear, ``We in the State

[[Page H94]]

of New York hereby revoke our status as a sanctuary State,'' or New 
York City, ``We revoke our status as a sanctuary city.'' I haven't 
heard that. I don't know if you have heard that, Mr. Speaker, but I 
haven't heard that.
  What that means is that we have a problem here, but the way to fix 
it, Mr. Speaker, is to kick your kids out of your school, take your tax 
money, and let people who are here illegally stay in the school that 
your kids are supposed to be learning in. That is apparently the 
answer.
  The difference is that instead of the taxpayers of New York paying 
for it, they want the taxpayers of the entire United States to pay for 
those in New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, and all the 50 States. 
That is what they want. They don't want to fix the problem. They want 
you to pay for more of the problem.
  I suspect it is the whole cause and effect thing, supply and demand, 
et cetera, age-old precepts that seem to make sense. It seems to me 
that if we are going to pay for more of that, we are probably going to 
get more of that. That is what it seems to me. I might be wrong.
  Anyhow, back to where I was. We took this trip down to the border. We 
went down to Eagle Pass, Texas. Thousands of people were coming across 
the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, for days and days on end.
  I am going to recognize my good friend, the gentleman from Arizona, 
here in a moment, but we have seen it on TV. We have seen it. We have 
heard it. We have read it in the papers. Thousands of people are coming 
illegally.

  Merry Christmas. You are in America now. You crossed the river, and 
here you are.
  When we went there, we went to a processing facility where they 
processed the people in. Understand, it is not like our Border Patrol 
has orders to say: Dear kind sir, or ma'am, I know you have come from 
one of the 170 countries that is currently infiltrating the United 
States, but we are going to have to turn you around and send you back.
  No, it is: Here, get in the truck. We will take you to the processing 
facility. Make sure you are all cleaned up and get what you need. We 
will send you wherever you want to go in the United States of America.
  By December 20, there were about 10,000 people at this processing 
facility at Eagle Pass, Texas, about 9,800, 260 percent of its 
capacity. They knew we were coming, so when we got there, somehow it 
went from 10,000 to 600.
  Interestingly enough, when we got there, even though there were only 
600, we think we are representative of the people. I am seeing this. My 
good friend from Virginia, Mr. Good, who is here with us this evening, 
has eyes in his head. He was seeing it. My good friend from Arizona, 
Mr. Biggs, was there. He has eyes in his head, so he saw it, too.
  We thought: Well, wouldn't it be nice if we showed our bosses, the 
people who pay our salary, our constituents? Why don't we take a 
picture of this?
  Hold on a second. You get your camera out, and the Border Patrol 
says: No photographs allowed.
  Some Members of Congress are a little recalcitrant. Maybe they didn't 
hear, I don't know, but they took pictures anyhow, or they got their 
phones out, and then Border Patrol said: You have to delete that photo.
  Mr. Speaker, at the very same time, this whole codel of 60 Members of 
Congress had cameras pointed at us from the Border Patrol.
  I said: Hold on a second, here. You are taking pictures of us, but we 
can't take pictures of this for our constituents? What is the policy? 
Who came up with this policy? What is the purpose for this policy?
  Mr. Speaker, I have this letter here, to the Honorable Secretary 
Alejandro Mayorkas, asking about that policy. We don't have the answer 
yet, but what is interesting is that right after we left, the media 
went into that very same facility, the television media. What do you 
think they did, Mr. Speaker? They filmed in that facility.
  Let me get this straight: If you are a member of the leftist media, 
God bless you. Take all the pictures you want of a facility that is at 
a fraction of what it was in capacity just days before, 260 percent.
  When Congress gets there, it is down to, I guess, manageable levels, 
if there is such a thing. We can't take pictures and show our 
constituents, our bosses, but the media sure can. The media sure can go 
in there and take pictures to show their viewers. Nothing to see here. 
Isn't it amazing?
  Mr. Speaker, unaccompanied minors increased 62 percent from 2011. The 
number of persons prosecuted for human trafficking increased 84 
percent.
  We are being told that this policy of letting anybody from 170 
countries come to the United States of America illegally across our 
borders is humane because whatever they are dealing with in their 
country must be worse, even though they have to pay the cartels, even 
though there are rape trees, even though there is indentured servitude 
and modern-day slavery associated with every single one of these 
individuals who come through the cartels, and the cartels have 
operational control over the border.
  Do you know how I know? Not because Secretary Mayorkas said so. He 
lied when he came to Congress and said he had operational control 
because the chief of the Border Patrol told us that they don't have 
operational control. After the chief of the Border Patrol told us that, 
the Secretary changed his position on it. He lied for a while, and now, 
I guess, he feels he is absolved from lying the first time he was here 
and lied to the American people.
  The other thing that you might not realize is that anybody under 14 
who comes across the border illegally, no background check. Guess what, 
Mr. Speaker? Probably no documentation either. If you say that you are 
14, no background check--whether you are 19, 21, or 13. No background 
check, so there is no way to prove it.
  The other thing is that people are coming from 170 countries, and one 
of them might be Afghanistan. One of them might be Iran. One of them 
might be North Korea, for all I know. I saw some crazy things--Germany, 
the Netherlands, Spain. I saw them on the list.
  Are these oppressed countries coming to America illegally? I don't 
think so, but they are coming illegally.
  What about the ones that don't have any relationship with the United 
States, other than a bellicose relationship?
  What about the Taliban? What about Syria? I don't know. What about 
Iran? Are any of those folks coming? Any folks coming from Hamas or 
Hezbollah? I don't know. Apparently, they don't know either because, do 
you know what, Mr. Speaker? When they do a background check, they check 
all the United States' references. That is awesome unless you are not a 
United States citizen or in the United States crime registry. Then we 
don't know what you have done.
  If you are Iranian coming across the Mexican border, and we ask 
Mexico to help us: Do you have anything on this Iranian person? He is 
of military age. He is not from America. He seems to be from Iran. He 
speaks Iranian. He speaks Persian. What do you have on him?
  I don't know. We are Mexico. We don't have anything on him.
  So, he is clear. That is what happens, Mr. Speaker.
  Sometimes they bring a minor with them, and this is where it really 
gets ugly. To have a minor with you, the background check, first of 
all, is often waived anyhow, or we can't get any information, even if 
they are not a citizen.
  We have this minor who comes into the country illegally. We are 
sending him somewhere. They have a phone number, send him there. We 
don't ask if that person is a citizen because we can't.
  If the person isn't a citizen and has a deportation order, and the 
minor is going to go to that person, the deportation order is not valid 
grounds to not send that minor to that person.
  That means we are sending a minor to a person that the United States 
is going to deport. Where is the minor going to be then? Look, I think 
we all know that is not really a problem because we are not going to 
deport anybody in the United States of America.

                              {time}  1815

  How about this? If you have a criminal history or you refuse to 
submit to a background check, but you are claiming an unaccompanied 
minor, that is

[[Page H95]]

not grounds for you to not have that unaccompanied minor.
  Mr. Speaker, I hate to say it this way, but it seems to me that in 
the United States of America it is probably easier to adopt a stray cat 
or a stray dog than to receive an unaccompanied minor coming across the 
Texas border through the cartels. That is one hell of a damn statement 
to make on this House floor, but I think it is reality.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs) for the purpose of 
a colloquy. Maybe he has got some thoughts on it. Am I wrong?
  Mr. BIGGS. No. Let's pick up with Mayor Adams of New York. Here is a 
guy who presides over a sanctuary city--that is awesome, that is 
awesome--but he doesn't want to experience what is a daily occurrence 
along the border, for those who live in a border community.
  They got some rain and wind in New York. It was blowing down the 
tents that the illegal aliens were dwelling in in New York at a park, 
so he decides this is what we are going to do: We are going to clear 
out a school. We are going to tell those 4,000 kids with no notice to 
the parents really, no notice to the teachers, no notice to the 
district. Boom, all these families, all these individuals--they are not 
all just families; you have got men of military age--2,000 of them 
plus--they are going to dwell in the school that your kid was getting 
ready to go to.
  He is like: What could go wrong? Why is everybody so upset?
  He says about that, the illegal aliens: I didn't see illegal 
migrants. I saw children. I saw children, and this community will 
always stand with children.
  What about the 4,000 kids at the school? What about those families?
  I didn't see children. I mean, he didn't say that, but that is really 
what he is implying: You are only a child of value if you are in the 
country illegally. You are not a child of value if you are going to a 
New York public school. That is the very attitude of this 
administration.
  Mr. Perry was down in Eagle Pass, and I was down in Eagle Pass with 
Representative Good. When I talked to the Speaker, he was a little 
miffed with me.
  He said: Why aren't you coming with us on our tour? Why are you going 
on your own tour?
  I said: Because I have got to go back to Arizona a little early, I am 
going to need to leave the bus.
  His staff tells my staff: Oh, Biggs can't come then because he has 
got to be on the bus the whole time.
  I said: I am going down a day early. I am going to rent a car and 
invite a few friends. Scott is a friend, but I am sorry, the car filled 
up too fast.
  We went down early. You know what CBP did? Because I go down often, I 
know a lot of people in CBP. They routinely take us on tours, but in 
this instance they said they had a new guy coming in, he hasn't been 
sworn in yet. He says, look--he tells my staff--you can come, but then 
he says, no, no, you can't come.
  We reached out to the chief judge of the Western District of Texas. 
We said: Look, we are going to be down there, we would like to visit 
with you. We want you to tell us what is going on.
  She says: Are you going to take them to the border?
  I said: No, they withdrew the border.
  She makes the call and says: I will be with Biggs and his group; we 
want a tour of the border.
  That night you did not see anything; you didn't see a lot of people 
crossing, did you?
  Mr. PERRY. No. We saw a few.
  Mr. BIGGS. Right. Right. I will tell you why in a second. That night 
it was cold, really cold, unseasonably cold in south Texas. It was 
raining cats and dogs. We are in the van, and they are taking us down 
there.
  I have been down there many times. We see it. It is cleaned up. They 
have moved 12,000 people in 24 hours because you guys, you yahoos are 
coming down there the next day and Secretary Mayorkas was down there 
yesterday. They cleaned it up. We can't have this. The media is coming 
down, a big gaggle of media, they can't see this. We can't have this, 
so they cleaned it up. They actually mowed the grass.
  I asked the guy, I said: Where's the garbage, man? I know there is 
garbage. I know there is clothing. As we are driving along, there is 
this massive pile of clothing.
  Did you see it, Bob? I said: Hey, is this one of the piles of 
clothing?
  Yeah, that is one of the piles right there.
  As we are going down, there are people all along the way there, 
right? That is what you see.
  Now, why did you not see anybody?
  We met the next day with a lot of folks you didn't get to meet with--
sorry--one of which informed us very clearly that the flow of people at 
the ports of entry are controlled by the CBP One app, so they will give 
you a green light.
  Mr. PERRY. I think my good friend from Arizona has to explain what 
the CBP One app is? What is that?
  Mr. BIGGS. If you want to come into the country illegally, they want 
to slow--they want to get some of you to come into the port of entry, 
so they have created an app. You preregister as an illegal alien say: I 
am going to be coming, and I want to be able to declare asylum, which 
is also illegal, by the way. That is not what the law is. So you have 
got an app.
  Mr. PERRY. You are telling me I have got an app on my phone where I 
can make a reservation to come illegally into the country, and I am 
making the reservation with the law enforcement agency charged with 
keeping me out of the country illegally?
  Mr. BIGGS. The gentleman is correct. The reason is because they want 
to facilitate you getting through faster and we want to distribute you 
throughout the country, at least this administration does. You 
register with the CBP One app. Well, they are going to tell you where 
the green lights are, and they are going to gray out where you can't 
come.

  So they started graying out Eagle Pass. This bridge we are talking 
about, there is a port of entry on the bridge. They said: No, we are 
not going to take any more people that way. You are going to need to go 
to some other port of entry, and so they do. That is how they slow that 
down.
  However, in the meantime, between the ports of entry, they are coming 
in droves.
  Mr. PERRY. What was the number, if you don't mind, the record number 
in December?
  Mr. BIGGS. The record number for apprehensions was 302,000 plus--
302,000 people. That would have put it clearly within the top 20 
largest cities in this country, when you think about that.
  Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I would like to have a colloquy 
with the gentleman from Arizona regarding an illustration relative to 
the CBP One app.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia for 
the purposes of a colloquy.
  Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Think about this, Mr. Speaker. If this Biden 
Federal Government was the local police and home burglaries were up, 
you have got rising crime, home burglaries, which are up under the 
Biden administration. In this case, if there were too many break-ins 
into homes across the country, their solution would be for the police 
to schedule the break-in with the criminals, meet them at the house, 
and let them in?
  That is essentially what they are doing. These illegals are 
coordinating with the government to schedule their illegal entry into 
our country, and they count that differently within their numbers than 
if they just go to the border on their own with the criminal cartels 
instead of scheduling it with our own Department of so-called Homeland 
Security.
  Mr. PERRY. It certainly is an astounding eventuality that we are 
realizing, and we also know that the Border Patrol wants to do its job. 
I firmly believe that 99.9 percent of the good members of Customs and 
Border Protection want to do their job. They want to protect the 
homeland, but they have been given orders.
  They have been given orders to process these people, not bar entry to 
this country, but process them to the point where we don't even have 
anybody out on the line. I am sure the gentleman from Arizona can talk 
about that.
  Mr. BIGGS. Yes, I will speak to that for just a second. A couple 
weeks ago now, I took a group of people to Lukeville, Arizona. Now, 
Lukeville is an incredibly remote port of entry, 35 people or so live 
by there. You come through Ajo, if you are coming from

[[Page H96]]

Phoenix or Tucson, and you are going to go to Rocky Point down in 
Mexico, it is very heavy traffic.
  Well, they actually had to close that port of entry. Why? Because the 
number of people pouring through, cutting holes in the fences, and we 
had to bring these people--we are talking multiple thousands a day, 
multiple thousands a day, 30,000 people in the last couple weeks, 
right? Think about that.
  What do they do? All they could do is take the personnel that they 
have, and they start working the line, right? No, they don't. They 
actually start transporting them to an off-the-border facility, a soft-
sided facility kind of like the one you saw except smaller for the 
first wait, because it is so remote, it literally takes hours to get to 
a soft-sided facility in Tucson, Arizona. They will go there, and they 
will spend a few hours, maybe a day or two before they are distributed.
  What happens? When I was there, I thought, oh, man, we missed the 
flood because we got there a little late in the morning. I went and 
talked to these people.
  I said: Where are you from?
  Guinea, Burkina Faso, Senegal, India, Pakistan, a few from Guatemala.
  Where are you going? You know what they do? They look around, they 
find a paper, it is a laminated card. It has the names of the people 
they are going to be in contact with, with phone numbers and an address 
where they are going to be taken. Everywhere from the Bronx to 
Missouri, to L.A., to Houston. They are going all over.
  Anyway, I said: This is interesting. Let's go on down, and we will 
drive the border road for a while. We drive the border road. There is a 
family of 10 people or so.
  I said: How did you get here?
  We came about 2 hours ago. No, they were 4 hours.
  We came 4 hours ago. We came through a hole in the fence down here 
that the coyote showed us, and we walked on up and we are just waiting. 
We haven't seen a CBP agent.
  In 4 hours?
  No, we haven't. We are just waiting. We are assured that someone will 
be along.
  They were from Mexico, within Mexico, so we were able to speak 
Spanish and talk to them.
  Then we go on down, and as we are going along, there isn't anybody. 
There is no CBP agent. We go a few miles, and we stop.
  We are like, you know, we have kind of missed the rush. One of the 
people I am with said: That looks like a group right there, over here, 
down to the right, on the road.
  Sure enough, there's 30 or 40 people walking, right? We wait, and 
they get by, and there is another group right behind them and another 
group and another group. We asked them where they were from. They are 
from all over.
  Where are you going? All over.
  How did you get in? There is a hole in the fence right down here a 
couple miles.
  We drove down there. Again, no CBP agents. Why? They are working 
their tail off having to transport and process. They can't do what they 
were hired to do, what we need them to do.
  We happened to run into a contractor: Hey, what are you doing?
  He has got a truck, and we had just seen the welding guy, who I knew 
was fixing the fence, and he had just driven by. We talked to this guy 
and said: What is up? Well, you know, he gets this notebook out and 
starts showing us all the holes in the fence they have had to repair.
  He said on this day--I can't remember the actual day; I think it was 
December 14--there were something like 28 holes in the fence that they 
had to repair. We were there at 10:30, 11:00 in the morning, they had 
already repaired six holes in the fence.
  I asked: What is happening? How does this happen? He says: Well, you 
will see along the Mexico side there is a highway. The coyote will come 
in, controlled by the cartel. He has got his own torch to cut the holes 
in the fence. They will wrap chains around it, they will pull out the 
slats, and people will just flood through, and that is what you saw.
  That day they had already repaired six holes, and we said: Well, 
where's the agents? We were looking for agents, as well. I love the 
agents; I talk to them all the time.
  They said: Oh, they are back at the facility processing.
  Mr. PERRY. Back at the facility processing?
  Mr. BIGGS. Because they can't get there. You know what? My colleagues 
on the Democrat side, they will tell you that there is no problem down 
on the border because they really don't think there is. I think this is 
an existential crisis.
  Mr. PERRY. I disagree. They do know there is, but they want to deny 
that there is to the American people. They want these people to keep 
coming illegally in the numbers that they have been and will continue 
to come, and every policy that they support promotes that. Every policy 
that we support to stem that tide they object to.

                              {time}  1830

  Mr. PERRY. My good friend from Virginia, I know you were there and 
talked to some of the folks, regular residents, not Border Patrol, not 
law enforcement, just people trying to get through their day as 
American citizens.
  I talked to a husband and wife who have a ranch there. The lady told 
me horrific stories. They have an 18-year-old daughter. The lady came 
home, and there were people who came across the border illegally, men, 
in her home.
  She was worried her daughter was upstairs, and she kicked those 
people out of her home and went to check on her daughter. Her daughter 
was upstairs listening to music and didn't even know anybody was in the 
house.
  I said: Well, what were they doing in your house?
  She said: Well, I keep a refrigerator out on the front porch because 
we get a bunch of migrants that come through, and we put water and 
stuff in it. We put beer in it, too. They wanted beer, but they didn't 
like the beer that I had out in that refrigerator, so they came into 
the house.
  How would you like that?
  If that is not enough, she told me she went to get in her truck, and 
some lady was in her truck bleeding to death because she had gotten her 
foot cut off trying to jump off the train that goes through their 
property.
  She said in the period of time between the end of the year, so the 
end of December, and when we were there, which is the beginning of 
January, I think essentially 3 or 4 days, there were 77 cuts in their 
fence.
  Mr. BIGGS. Three days.
  Mr. PERRY. The U.S. Government--your tax dollars--is paying for the 
cuts in the fence that Mr. Biggs from Arizona is talking about.
  These people, citizens of the United States who are taxpayers 
depending upon their government to protect them from invasion, guess 
who pays to fix their fence?
  They can't even have animals on their land anymore because they can't 
keep them in the fenced area because the fences get cut by people 
coming across illegally.
  Is that any way to live, my good friend from Virginia?
  Mr. GOOD of Virginia. It is not any way to live. I have heard our 
Speaker say and members of our Conference echo him when he says that 
the border is the hill to die on, that the border is the fight to have.
  My question to them is: What does that mean? When members of 
leadership or members of our Conference say the border is the hill to 
die on, what do they mean by that? What are they prepared to do?
  This was my sixth trip in my 3 years in Congress. The first one was 
led by our friend from Arizona, and this most recent one was also led 
by Mr. Biggs from Arizona.
  What struck me about this time was even though they knew we were 
coming--they knew at least a larger contingent was coming the next day. 
We got there a little earlier the day before, as you know, Tuesday 
night last week before the main deal on Wednesday.
  I have never seen the brazen, bold amount of flow that we observed, 
dozens at a time while we were there.
  In my previous experience, we were talking to ranchers, local law 
enforcement, National Guard, Border Patrol, and residents who live on 
the border, but we looked a little bit official. We have these Border 
Patrol guides, some friends guiding us and so forth, so it is pretty 
sparse. Not this time. They were coming across right in front of us by 
the dozens, most of them military-age males, single males, coming 
across themselves, not concerned.

[[Page H97]]

  They are looking for Border Patrol personnel to surrender to, to get 
the free travel, the free housing, the free healthcare, the free social 
services, the free education if there are children involved, and to be 
taken up and taken care of at taxpayer expense.
  However, as we talked to the chief of that sector that we were at, 
the Del Rio sector, this past week, he told us that of the 240 miles 
there that they were responsible for, only about 4 miles had been 
patrolled during this recent period of time when there were thousands 
coming across because they were all so busy processing.
  Mr. PERRY. Wait. Four miles?
  Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Out of 240. The sector chief that we met with 
told us 4 out of 240 miles had been secured or patrolled, I should say, 
during this period of time before we had gotten there because the 
Border Patrol agents were busy processing illegals into the country.
  We talked to a judge, as Mr. Biggs mentioned, who said when she 
orders individuals detained, they are still released.
  We talked to a senior DHS official who told us that they don't know 
where 75 percent of the people who they have released into the interior 
of the country have gone over these last 3 years.
  They acknowledge that they have apprehended 8 million and released 
essentially 8 million. Last year, it was 3.2 million, and they only 
released, or returned, rather, 140,000.
  Mr. Speaker, 3 million last year released in the country, and they 
don't know where 75 percent of them are because, as Mr. Biggs says, 
they get a piece of paper saying they have a notice to appear at a 
court date in the future.
  We will get in touch with you if we can find you and tell you when 
that court date is a few years down the road.
  They catch 100 on the terrorist watch list from the dumb ones who 
surrender to the Border Patrol and who don't think they are going to 
get caught because we are so generous and do so little vetting at the 
border. They still caught 100 among the 8 million who come and 
surrender to Border Patrol.
  How troubling is it that there are an estimated 2 million, at least, 
got-aways, the ones who don't surrender because they are trafficking 
the women and children. They are trafficking fentanyl and other harmful 
drugs. They recognize the terrorist ties and the criminal backgrounds. 
They don't surrender.
  There are an estimated 2 million. How many dangerous individuals 
might be among that 2 million? What percentage do you think it might 
be? Ten percent? So 90 percent are confused and don't know about all 
the free stuff? They don't know to use the CBP app? They don't know to 
surrender to Border Patrol to get all the free stuff? If only 10 
percent of them are bad guys, that would be 200,000. About 2,000 people 
perpetrated the Hamas attack in Israel.
  When we have let individuals in this country from 170 different 
countries. They are coming from China, Russia, the Middle East, hostile 
nations. We don't even know where they are coming from.
  That is on top of the same administration, by the way, that brought 
200,000 people here from Afghanistan in 2 weeks and didn't vet them 
either. Most of them were military-age males. They claim they were 
doing it to bring our interpreters and our translators.
  I know General Perry served in the military and wore the uniform, and 
our friend who has joined us here, Mr. Crane, served in the military 
and wore the uniform as a Navy SEAL.
  I went to Fort Pickett to visit those Afghanis in my district after 
they had brought several thousand there to house them. I took a Marine 
veteran who works in my district office. We went together to visit that 
fort. We did the official tour first.
  They told us we couldn't come. By the way, they allowed a colleague 
of mine from the Virginia delegation--they allowed her to come from the 
neighboring district, but they didn't want me to come. She gave a very 
different report than I did, by the way.
  We said we are coming anyway. We had DHS and military personnel show 
us around. After we were done, we did our own wandering around. We went 
and talked to the Afghanis who were there. I remind you that these are 
the translators and interpreters. Guess how many of them spoke English? 
About 1 out of 10.
  They finally acknowledged they didn't vet those people, and they 
don't know where they are. You wonder to what end and to what limit.
  Why would our own President perpetrate this border invasion on 
purpose? Why would he do this? When in the history of our country has 
our own President done more to intentionally harm the United States 
than what this President has done? If he sealed the border today, 
irreparable harm has been done.
  Mr. PERRY. I want to tell a story about getting on the plane in San 
Antone to come home. Before I do that, we are joined by the great Eli 
Crane from the State of Arizona, out of that uniform and into this 
uniform, fighting for the great people of Arizona.
  Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for allowing me to join 
tonight to talk about this crisis at our southern border.
  Mr. Good, when you talk about how many got-aways we have right now in 
this country, how many individuals on the terror watch list, it is 
about 300 since Biden took office.
  To give the American people some context, I know that number under 
the last administration was under 20. I believe it was about 14 people 
who were encountered on the southern border that were on the terrorist 
watch list.
  That is something that really piques my interest because like a lot 
of Americans who are still alive today and have jobs, families, who 
love this country, 9/11 changed my life.
  I dropped out of school my senior year and joined the Navy the week 
after 9/11. I remind Americans it only took 19 people to perpetrate 
those acts on 9/11.
  When you are talking about this amount of numbers, this invasion--I 
hate to say it. I hate to sound like an alarmist, but as somebody who 
considers myself a sheepdog, somebody who considers myself the type of 
individual who wants to protect other people--and we have other 
sheepdogs around this Capitol right now. There are some in the balcony. 
There are some out there.
  We know what this is going to lead to. I hate to say it, but I am 
going to say it because Americans need to know. It is not a question of 
if. It is a question of when.
  It breaks my heart, but it enrages me at the same time because 
Americans deserve better. They deserve leadership. They deserve a 
government that puts their safety and security as a top priority. We 
are not--I repeat, we are not--doing that.
  It is one of the reasons right now in the Homeland Security Committee 
that we are working on impeaching Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
  I hope it is something that we are actually able to conclude this 
time, even though a couple of weeks ago we tried that in this very 
Chamber, and eight Republicans voted against it.
  It is imperative that we do that, not because we are going to get a 
better replacement. It is imperative that we do that because the 
American people are watching.
  They are sick and tired of this place. They are sick and tired of the 
politicians here. One of the biggest reasons they are sick and tired of 
it is because nobody ever gets held accountable.
  It has been a long time since a Cabinet Secretary was impeached. I am 
not sure it has ever even happened.
  Mr. Biggs, has that ever even happened?
  Mr. BIGGS. One hundred fifty years ago.
  Mr. CRANE. There have been a lot of historic things that have 
happened in this Congress, Mr. Biggs, and I am hoping that the 
impeachment of a Cabinet Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, is one of the 
next things that happens because I want the American people to know 
that there is not one set of rules for them and one set of rules for 
the people up there. They know for a fact they could not come up here 
and do the exact opposite of what their job description was.
  Look at his job title: Secretary of Homeland Security. I don't know 
about you. I am not an English major, but that would make me believe, 
Mr. Perry, that his job might be to protect the homeland.

[[Page H98]]

  What do you think about that?
  Mr. PERRY. Well, I was around when that agency was enacted, and there 
was a reason we called it that. It was supposed to help all the 
disparate agencies collaborate toward one singular focus, which was 
protecting America.

  Mr. BIGGS. Can I interject something? We have been talking about 
Eagle Pass, and I have a bit of breaking news for you.
  Those who were with me, we actually drove through the golf course to 
get to a couple of our points.
  Mr. PERRY. People don't know that, Mr. Biggs from Arizona, but there 
is a golf course right on the river at Eagle Pass, Texas.
  While people are coming illegally across the border, you could be 
teeing off or on the green trying to get one in the cup. They are 
walking right across in front of you, yelling. They were yelling 
``Venezuela'' when I was there.
  I don't know why you come from Venezuela to America illegally yelling 
``Venezuela.'' You would think you would at least have the sense to say 
``USA,'' but that is another story.
  What is your story on the golf course?
  Mr. BIGGS. The breaking news is this: That park area has now been--
today, Governor Abbott of Texas, because he feels so overrun, has 
declared a state of emergency, and that property has been taken over by 
the State of Texas.
  They will arrest anybody who enters that property for criminal 
trespass and prosecute them. I guess it underlines kind of a finer 
point that we have been talking about. Is this a crisis? Are we chasing 
phantoms, or is this a real crisis? Well, it is a real crisis, and as 
we sit here, this administration is a lawless administration. They are 
not going to do anything to actually enforce the border.
  I say this often. We can pass every kind of policy we want, but 
believe me, title 8 forbids Mayorkas from doing what he is doing.

                              {time}  1845

  He can't catch and release. Courts have told him to reinstate MPP, 
the migrant protocol protections. He won't do that. This administration 
is lawless, and I can only think of one thing, and the Founders gave it 
to us. They were crystal clear. They said: Your check, legislative 
branch, is the purse strings. It is the funding. I do not know how we 
can continue to fund an administration that chooses willfully to 
facilitate an invasion of the United States of America. How can we?
  Mr. PERRY. Well, Mr. Biggs of Texas, I am glad you brought that up. 
Now, on my trip home, I went to the airport in San Antonio. It was 
early in the morning. People are around, but, you know, we know what to 
look for because we have heard the stories. There is a brown envelope, 
and people are carrying it.
  Now, you know, you either have your app on your phone--not the CBP 
One app, but the app for the airline you are flying--so you get your 
boarding pass or you are carrying a physical boarding pass, and it 
says, you know, zone one, whatever, right, to tell you when you are 
boarding. People not from this country that have never been on an 
airplane before don't know what any of that is. They want to get to the 
next--and I happened to be going to Charlotte, South Carolina, for my 
connection to get back home to the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 
I am sitting listening to the announcements, and I am going to show up 
in line at the appropriate time. But the folks that don't understand 
English and don't know what a boarding pass is, they just all go to the 
front of the line.
  These people that work for the airlines, they are trying to hold back 
this horde of people that just want to get in the airplane. Now, it is 
one thing--Mr. Biggs, you speak Spanish. My mother is Colombian, so I 
know a little bit; you know, I can make my way through it. But if you 
have got people coming from 170 different countries, the gate agent 
likely doesn't know what you speak in Burkina Faso or maybe you don't 
know Farsi or something like that. They are trying to explain to these 
people, no, you have to wait your turn.
  Now, while all that is happening, it is going through my mind that 
these people that came from some other country other than Mexico, which 
is important because they flew into Mexico and then walked across the 
border, so they had some means to get there. It wasn't like they were 
just out in a boat floating around in the ocean and all of a sudden, 
oh, we are on the Rio Grande and we are coming into America now. I 
mean, this is all planned, right?
  Now the American taxpayer is paying for these folks to get on this 
plane. They just came across illegally, and they are going to 
Charlotte. I don't know where they are going after that, but I know a 
bunch of them were going to Charlotte because I was on the plane with 
them. We are going to pay for that.
  We are talking about funding, last year's funding. We are not into 
this year's funding. We are still trying to figure out last year's 
funding. And I think, Mr. Biggs, right now we are being asked to just 
continue to fund what we have been talking about for the last hour; is 
that not right?
  Mr. BIGGS. You are being asked to fully fund the Department of 
Homeland Security today with no policy changes even. That is what you 
are being asked. But more than that, you are being asked to continue 
all the other programs, the crazy subsidies for Green New Deal stuff, 
which was forecast at $350 billion, which is now forecast at $2.5 
trillion. But they are asking you to basically get on board that. So 
you are getting a weak sauce plan from the Senate that even Senators 
are rebelling against, saying this will do nothing, which it won't do 
anything.
  Mr. CRANE. But, Congressman Biggs, it is an election year. We 
couldn't possibly disrupt things because it is an election year, right? 
That was one of the arguments I heard today why we can't do anything 
about the border--it is an election year, and there are politics on the 
line.
  Mr. BIGGS. Well, so the question is really then are you content with 
approximately 5 million more people illegally entering the country over 
the next 12 months or are you going to try to do something about it? 
Because 302,000 plus at least--they acknowledge 50,000 on the got-
aways. They don't know what the unknown got-aways are, but--a lot of 
people don't this, but I am going to explain it.
  When you have a group that you can't catch up to--and we get that a 
lot in Arizona. Arizona is the number one known got-away place. Why? 
Because it is rugged. It is really desolate. If you see a group, and 
you can't tell how many it is, do you know what you get to mark down? 
Twenty plus. They count it as 20. It may be 75. It may be 50. It may be 
22. But it is inaccurate. And the people I talk to tell me it is at 
least one for one. If it is 50,000, it is 100,000 because they don't 
know what the real number is. That is 402,000 last month alone. And do 
you want to continue that? How can we as a country continue that? And 
they are coming from 170 different nations.
  Mr. PERRY. So in the 5 minutes we have remaining, now, Mr. Crane is 
new here, so maybe he is excited to vote to continue that. I don't 
think he is, but that is between him and his constituents.
  Mr. Good was here not this last Christmas last month but the 
Christmas before, and we got a present from the United States Senate 
called an omnibus. Everything was in it: all kinds of spending, 
trillions of dollars, bad policy that is leading to the destruction of 
this country, including a wide-open border.
  If I am not mistaken, Mr. Good, you voted ``no'' on that.
  Mr. GOOD of Virginia. It was $1.6 trillion, later increased and 
scored up to $4.6 trillion. And the deal that we heard about announced 
over the weekend, the deal between Senate and House leadership is $1.66 
trillion, $20 billion higher than what the current score is for the 
omnibus that we appropriately attacked, criticized, and fought against 
a year ago.
  We are now being ask to vote for an increase in spending for the very 
policies that we campaign against, Mr. Crane, Mr. Biggs, that we run 
against, that we rail against, that are destroying the country, and the 
spending levels that are bankrupting our kids and our grandkids while 
this border invasion continues.

  Mr. PERRY. In the 4 minutes we have left, I am standing with great 
American patriots here that have decided to serve in Congress, do the 
right thing no matter what Washington,

[[Page H99]]

D.C., tells them. It seems to me--I don't know, maybe I am cynical, 
maybe I am jaded--we are getting no help from our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle on this border issue or on this spending issue. 
Likewise, we are getting little to no help from the other side of the 
building.
  Are we the only four Americans that care about this? There are other 
good colleagues here that care about it. Well, they are on this side of 
the aisle, and they are on this side of the building. Mr. Biggs, is 
there anybody--you come from a State where there are Democrats elected. 
I come from Pennsylvania. We have 12.5, 13 million Pennsylvanians. 
During the course of the 4-year Biden administration there is going to 
be a whole new Pennsylvania in this country, right? That is how many 
people are coming. Do our friends on the other side of the aisle have 
no constituency that says, hold on a second, I am tired of paying for 
this? Mr. Speaker, is there anybody in your State on the other side of 
the aisle that will say I have had enough? Mr. Biggs?
  Mr. BIGGS. I will tell you this: There may be three people over here 
I can name. I won't name them to protect them because they always talk 
like they are going to help us out, but they don't ever help us out. I 
love them to death, but they never quite can deliver it. But I will 
tell you, when you go along the border from RGV to San Ysidro, which is 
San Diego, and you go talk to the local folks, many of whom are 
Democrat leaders of those cities and those counties, they want 
something done. They will stand with you.
  And do you know what you guys heard in your group, and we happened to 
be there? They said shut the government down until you shut the border 
down. And do you know what? That is a common sentiment all along the 
border. It is common in my district in Arizona. And I have got a great 
plan for that, but I can't introduce it in 2 minutes, but, Mr. Speaker, 
I will tell you, that is the facts. Even the Democrats who are facing 
the brunt of this--and I don't care what New York is doing. You go tell 
the people down in Ajo, Arizona, why they are getting overrun right 
now. They would like to hear it from you.
  Mr. PERRY. That is right. In the remaining 1\1/2\ minutes, I will 
kind of end this where I started it out for all of us. We have got 
friends on the other side of the aisle here in this building, friends 
in the other party around the country in charge of cities, in charge of 
States. All of them are complaining. They are all complaining. This is 
a crisis. It is an emergency in our State. It is an emergency in our 
city and our community. We have to have something done about it.
  I am still waiting. I am still waiting for the first one to say we 
are going to revoke the sanctuary city, the sanctuary State status. But 
until that happens, Mr. Speaker, they are not serious about any of 
this. They don't care about any of this. They don't care about any of 
the citizens that elected them, that pay taxes in those political 
subdivisions. They don't care about them. They want to appear to care, 
but they don't care because they are allowing this. They are not only 
allowing it like Secretary Mayorkas, like my friends on the other side 
of the aisle and the other side of the building, they are not just 
allowing it; they are promoting it. They want it to happen.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind Members to direct all 
remarks to the Chair, to formally yield, and to reclaim time when under 
recognition.

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