[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H673-H676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FISA ABUSES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Biggs) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, over the last several years, we have received 
a seemingly endless stream of reports of abuses by the FBI and other 
parts of our Federal police apparatus spying on Americans by abusing 
either section 702 or title I of FISA.
  I want to review some of those today before I get to the border. 
Let's talk about the report issued April 21, 2022, by the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Court of Washington, D.C. Here's what some of 
them are.
  Between late 2016 and early 2020, the FBI regularly queried 
unminimized FISA information using identifiers of individuals listed in 
local police homicide reports.
  This wasn't people accused. This included victims. They were using 
illicit querying, which in my world, when I used to practice, we would 
call an illegal search. They were going after victims, the next of kin 
of the victim, and witnesses.
  Guess what was found. Those queries were violating the querying 
standard because there was no reasonable basis to expect they would 
return foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime. That is just one.
  The next one, June 2020, used identifiers of 133 individuals arrested 
in connection with civil unrest and protests between May 30 and June 
18, 2020. Guess what they found. No specific potential connections to 
terrorist-related activity, and there was not going to be a reasonable 
likelihood that they would retrieve evidence of a crime. The FBI still 
conducted that illegal query.
  Between June 11 and 15, 2020, another 156 queries were done. Guess 
what. No reasonable likelihood of finding evidence of a crime or 
international terrorism.
  On the January 6 issue, an analyst ran 13 queries and couldn't even 
remember why she was doing this. There was no reasonable likelihood to 
receive foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime.
  On April 26, 2021, again, more going after political activist groups, 
and there were 330 queries and 697 queries. Again, there was no 
likelihood of foreign intelligence and no evidence of a crime.

                              {time}  1630

  They continued on, two more queries, another 360 queries here, 
another 400 here. None of these queries were reasonably likely to 
retrieve foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime.
  How about this one. They conducted three batch queries. This is the 
FBI spying on Americans. They conducted three batch queries consisting 
of approximately 23,132 separate queries.
  Guess what, Mr. Speaker?
  Those are all related to January 6.
  What did they find?
  No basis to believe the queries were reasonably likely to retrieve 
foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime from section 
702 of FISA.
  How about this one, this is a favorite, 19,000 people wanted to 
donate to a political campaign. So they donated to somebody's campaign.
  What happened, Mr. Speaker?
  The FBI queried all 19,000 of those people.
  Guess what, Mr. Speaker?
  They said that there were only eight of these 19,000 who had any ties 
whatsoever to foreign influence.
  They abused the civil liberties of 19,000 individuals without a 
reasonable basis.
  I could go on here. There are 2,000 more between April 1, 2020, and 
March 31, again, no likelihood of intelligence, no likelihood that they 
will find anything leading to a crime, and it goes on and on in this 
report.
  People say to me: Andy, why do you think we have to have a warrant 
before the Federal Government starts gaining access to your personal 
and private telecommunications data?
  It is because the FBI has abused it time and time again.
  So when we start looking at this, we see other things.
  How about this one. This report literally came out yesterday on 
Valentine's Day. The U.S. intelligence community asked foreign spy 
agencies to surveil 26 associates of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 
2016 election. They asked 26 foreign spy agencies of the Five Eyes to 
spy.
  Now, who are the Five Eyes? They are intelligence gathering 
organizations in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
  They asked them to spy on people working in Donald Trump's campaign. 
There was no basis for it. There was no indication that there was any 
wrongdoing going on and that they would find foreign intelligence, but 
they had something that they wanted to do, and that was to craft a 
narrative.
  Do you know who knew about that, Mr. Speaker?

[[Page H674]]

  The highest levels of the Barack Obama Government.
  When I say highest levels, it was President Obama, Vice President 
Biden, James Clapper, and James Comey.
  In December of 2023, a letter was written by the chairwoman of the 
U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Now, this is 
important because my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee want to 
tell you that: Oh, my gosh, you can't have warrants. If you have 
warrants, we are not going to be able to spy on enough people, so we 
can't stop potential threats to the country.
  By the way, when I asked them about this letter, because I had this 
letter, they said: We never heard of that person, and we never heard of 
that board.
  Odd, isn't it, that that board is mentioned in the base bill that 
they signed off on?
  It is mentioned in the base bill.
  What is it for?
  This is a group that is supposed to help monitor and make sure that 
we get everything we need to in order to cure and fix FISA going 
forward.
  Now, I am going to take a brief break before I continue on with that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the redoubtable gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Higgins).
  Mr. HIGGINS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona 
for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, we truly live in an interesting time in our country when 
Americans watch this and they see two lone conservative Republicans, 
two members of the House Freedom Caucus, standing in an empty Chamber 
discussing some of the most challenging threats we have ever faced as a 
nation and what might we do.
  So I think the answer lies in the simple acknowledgment of the fact 
that this is not our House. This House belongs to the people, and the 
people are always present because the people are watching.
  Americans are quick to forgive and hesitant to condemn. It is in our 
nature. It is in our DNA.
  Conservative Americans, particularly, find it difficult to believe 
that our own Federal Government has, in many instances and across 
several agencies and departments, become quite weaponized against the 
people in a regular course of events.
  Every day, Americans read the headlines about the FBI violation of 
laws, a DOJ persecution of Americans that does not seem to comply with 
judicial righteousness. They see our former President's home raided by 
the FBI, they have friends and neighbors who are raided by the IRS and 
the ATF or the DOL or the EPA. Americans see this and acknowledge it, 
but we have been slow to condemn, again, because it is in our nature to 
be understanding and forgiving, compassionate, and supportive, 
certainly of some of the most historically admired agencies in the 
history of our country, like the FBI.
  So although we, as a nation, as we look at men like Congressman Biggs 
and myself, we oppose--how dare we--but we oppose the expansion of 
police state surveillance. This echoes across the land where gradually 
America is waking up, and it is certainly time to wake up because we 
don't have too much time left. We could lose this thing if we don't 
respond now and act now to protect American individual rights, 
liberties, and freedoms from an ever-encroaching oppressive government. 
If we don't act, we will lose this thing.
  Men like   Andy Biggs and I know that. That is why we are here alone, 
Mr. Speaker. That is why we cry out on behalf of the Nation that we 
love.

  The moment is coming when Americans across the land from sea to 
shining sea will say: I understand what is happening, and I condemn it.
  That moment is coming when Americans will realize that everything we 
have stored in the cloud is already in the possession of our FBI, DOJ, 
NSA, and CIA. That moment of awareness is coming, and conservative 
constitutionalist Republicans like me and my colleagues in the Freedom 
Caucus are standing in this moment of time not in opposition to 
Americans who disagree with us, but in support and love for the 
Americans whom we swore an oath to, to the freedom and the 
constitutional rights, the civil liberties, the protected right to 
travel the land and be secure in our persons, our effects, our papers, 
and our homes as stated by our Founders.
  We stand for that right, and we are not going to allow American 
freedoms to be run over by out-of-control, rogue operatives within our 
Federal Government.
  So I thank my colleague and friend, Representative Biggs, for 
allowing me to speak on the floor this day. I support this vigorous 
debate, and I am confident that America will land on the right side of 
this thing, so that we can preserve and protect the freedoms that we 
enjoy in our Republic.
  Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, my good friend from 
Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), who is very eloquent as he conveyed our 
passion and our sincere desire to curb and restrain an out-of-control, 
weaponized Federal Government.
  So, Mr. Speaker, as I was talking before, how do you get there?
  One of the solutions is you have a warrant before you are able to go 
and conduct that investigation, that basic query into my personal data. 
We have got some here who don't want to do that. They say: Oh, no, no, 
we need to expand our spying.
  They actually want more authority when they have abused it, literally 
278,000 times in the last few years, with what the Inspector General 
said were unlawful queries.
  So we asked the head of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties 
Oversight Board, whose job it is to watch the FISA Court, to say: Look, 
tell us. We want to know if there is a warrant there, is it going to 
hinder collection of information that is necessary for the national 
security of the country?
  Do you know what she said, Mr. Speaker?
  She said: I strongly disagree that a requirement for FISC approval of 
U.S. person queries would amount to a de facto ban.
  What is that requirement? It is a warrant.
  As noted in my separate statement: Requiring FISC review of U.S. 
person query terms is necessary to protect Americans' privacy rights 
and, in my view, would neither cause an end to U.S. person queries nor 
undermine the overall efficacy of section 702 and protect the U.S. 
national security.
  Especially assuming that Congress were to provide exceptions as 
outlined and we have provided those exceptions. Those exceptions in our 
warrant requirement are consistent with the canon of law which 
interprets the most controversial--I shouldn't say controversial--but 
the most contested of the Bill of Rights, which is the Fourth 
Amendment.
  Moreover, not only is the exception there, I brought this just so you 
could see, Mr. Speaker, just so I could hold it up so everybody could 
see. Where these blue tabs are there are other parts of that same 
underlying base bill which would curb this abuse of FISA that actually 
have the same exceptions.
  So to my colleagues who are complaining that: Oh, no, we can't go 
forward because we have to have carte blanche on it. The reality is 
they themselves know and they have approved those exceptions in other 
parts of the base bill.
  Now, I am going to leave FISA for a second. I have to say one more 
thing. We were scheduled today, this week, we were supposed to be 
having right now the debate and vote on the rule to allow this base 
bill to go forward and on the amendments, three amendments from the 
Judiciary Committee and three from the Intelligence Committee, so we 
would have a true, regular order, open debate on this, on this very 
critical issue.
  Something happened yesterday. We had the presentation by Judiciary 
and the Rules Committee, and about that time, there was an announcement 
that there was something going on, a top-secret, national security 
issue, come down to the classified room and you can read the documents.
  At that time when that statement was released by the chairman of the 
Intelligence Committee, what happened to the Dow Jones?
  It took a spike downward because it spooked our economy.
  What happened around the world?
  Nations wanted to know what in the heck is he talking about. He is 
the Intelligence Committee chairman. They were concerned and nervous 
about that.

[[Page H675]]

  Now, I went down and read that document. I can't talk about the 
document, Mr. Speaker, but I can tell you what the ranking member said. 
The ranking member said: There is nothing to panic about. There is 
nothing new here.
  I have never seen U.S. national security leveraged to prevent us from 
even being able to debate a bill or an amendment. In this case, it is 
not even the bill, it is just the amendment. It is outrageous.
  Now, let's talk about something else that is outrageous. I just spent 
hours in a committee hearing. My Democratic friends always use the 
terms ``fanatic MAGA Republicans, far-right MAGA Republicans.''
  They said that they, those far-right MAGA Republicans, they have to 
obey Donald Trump on the border. Donald Trump doesn't want anything 
done on the border.
  I am going to tell you something right now, Mr. Speaker. My far-left 
fanatic Democrat friends are intent on obeying Joe Biden, President 
Biden, and they don't want the border secure. They say: Oh, my gosh. 
Joe Biden says: I have to have more authorities.
  He didn't need more authorities when he issued dozens of executive 
orders within 72 hours of becoming inaugurated as President that 
basically emasculated all of our border security.
  Title 8 has not been revised. Title 8 is still there. That is the 
title under which CBP and ICE operate and USCIS. Right there. That 
hasn't been changed.
  Do you know what has been changed, Mr. Speaker?
  This administration has basically said: We are not going to enforce 
the law.
  Not only do they say that; when you go down to the border, and I go 
down often, and I talk to them: Where are you from?
  I am from Senegal.
  Really. What are you doing over here?
  I am from Burkina Faso.
  How about you?
  I am from Guinea.

                              {time}  1645

  How about you?
  Guatemala.
  They are from all over the world--Mali, Mauritania. Down in 
Lukeville, for a while, Mauritania was the number one country of origin 
for these illegal aliens.
  Why are you coming?
  We were told it is easy to get into the United States today. That is 
why we are here.
  You are from northeast Africa. Why are you coming to the U.S., into 
an out-of-the-way place like Lukeville, Arizona?
  Well, I am here because the Office of Migration for the United 
Nations told me it is actually easier to get across the U.S. border 
than it is to get into Europe today.
  Let me just tell you, we saw this today in our hearing. One of the 
Democrats said: What authority do you think President Biden has today 
that he could actually shut the border?
  Our witness correctly cited 8 U.S.C. section 1182(f), which confers 
upon the President the authority to close the border in response to a 
crisis. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that in Trump v. Hawaii. They 
noted that the statute entrusted the President with the decisions 
whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how 
long, and on what conditions.
  Don't tell me that this President can't close the border tomorrow.
  I will give you another example. The Del Rio Sector, Del Rio--you 
will remember this. The Del Rio Bridge, that bridge that goes across 
the Rio Grande, there is a port of entry right up there on the bridge. 
Haitians were coming in, 15 to 20,000 a day. They have had 15,000 or so 
underneath that bridge.
  The question at that point was this: Why is Mexico letting them 
organize? They were organizing down about 60 miles south of the border, 
bus caravans of Haitians, bringing them up. They would then wade across 
the Rio Grande River. What can we do?
  The CBP sector chief said: I am closing that port of entry.
  Now, when you close the port of entry, guess who gets stopped? That 
is right, legal traffic and the commercial legal traffic.
  Do you know what happened? The town just across the river from Del 
Rio, they said: We can't take this. They lasted 2 days. They called the 
Federal Government of Mexico and said: We can't have this port of entry 
closed.
  They stopped transporting those illegal aliens to the border to come 
across. That is what happens. When you close that border, you close 
that down and use that leverage, all of a sudden, Mexico becomes 
compliant, and they stop facilitating illegal aliens, that illegal 
border crossing. That is what happens when you have the will to do 
something.
  I commend the sector chief there, because they kind of took it on 
their own on that. That is what goes on, and that is what has to go on.
  Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 7 minutes remaining.
  Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in calling 
upon our leadership to do something that I think is critical.
  What is it that we need? We need the leverage to get enforcement, not 
the leverage to enact policy. I believe this is a lawless 
administration. They are not going to enforce the policies that we 
invoke. They instead will go around them.
  For instance, H.R. 2. When we go to H.R. 2, a lot of my colleagues 
say we need to stick H.R. 2 on everything. Well, the problem with 
sticking H.R. 2 on anything is, even if H.R. 2 passes--it is a great 
law, by the way. I have written most of the provisions in that H.R. 2 
one time or another, introduced those one time or another. It is a good 
law. I am the cosponsor of that bill. It takes care of a lot of issues, 
whether it is on asylum, whether it is on Flores, whether it is on any 
of these other technical issues we have. Guess what? Even if it becomes 
law, I believe that the administration will paper over it, and they 
will go around the law.
  They will go around the law because they want an open border. That is 
what they want.
  I thought I would share with you just a couple of other, I think, 
interesting anecdotes.
  I got a call recently from a friend of mine down on the border. He is 
working in the area of the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation. The 
Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation has 62 linear miles on the border 
between Arizona and Mexico.
  In the middle of that area, you have the mountains that are coming on 
down, and then you have this area, what we call the San Miguel gate. 
This gate is really isolated. There is nothing else out there. A little 
bit--about a mile--I am thinking to myself--south, moving this way, so 
that would be west. You are going to have the wash. People can just 
flow across the wash. There is no fence, per se. There is a four-strand 
wire fence there.
  A few months ago, when I was down there, we are driving down the 
road, and what do I see? I see what looks like five or six kids playing 
in the dirt road. I mean, there is nothing there. We had been driving 
for miles, didn't see anybody, no CBP agents or anything.
  We get up there, there is a group of 25 people, mostly family units. 
We asked them where they came from.
  They said: We were down in Caborca. That is about 40-50 miles south 
of the border. That is where we met up with our coyote.
  Did you know any of these people?
  No, we didn't know each other. We all had to hire this coyote. We 
came together. The coyote brings us up, drops us off several miles 
south of the border, points up and says: Just keep walking toward that 
mountain, and when you get across the wires, step across, sit 
alongside the road, and then, sooner or later, CBP agents will come.

  We asked them how long they had been there. They had been there four 
hours, hadn't seen any agents. We happened to be down there. I had some 
Members of Congress with me.
  I tell you that because that is how remote this place is, but do you 
know how many people they are getting there? Groups of 700 to 800 a 
day, with single groups. This is busloads that are being organized in 
Caborca. They are bringing them up, dropping them off, and here they 
come through the San Miguel gate.
  Guess what happens at that point? Every agent that is on duty is now 
processing and moving those people up to a soft-sided facility to await 
further

[[Page H676]]

processing and ultimately, within 72 hours, released into the United 
States of America, with parole status, which means they can work after 
6 months' period of time. They are going to get legal papers, yet they 
entered the country illegally.
  I asked them: What is happening otherwise?
  It just so happens that that is the sector that has the highest rate 
of known and suspected unknown got-aways. Why don't they want to just 
surrender? It is so easy now. You just surrender. They are going to 
process you and release you and pay for you to go wherever you want to 
go in the country.
  What the deal is, they are carrying drugs, or else they are Chinese 
and nationals of military age, or they are from other nations that are 
special interest, that sponsor terrorism.
  They are coming through, and how do we know that they are coming 
through in these groups? We do have some sensors in some of those 
places. We still are using tracking. We have agents who still track. 
The score, if there is more than 20 in that group, they don't write 35. 
They write 20-plus, so even that is inaccurate.
  I enjoin my colleagues. Please, we have to use the purse strings that 
we have and stop funding a government that is spying on us and is 
emasculating our southern border. We no longer have a border. That is 
the only way you are going to get enforcement on the border. Policy is 
good, but enforcement is the goal.
  Mr. Speaker, thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________