[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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