[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15637-15642]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE RULE OF LAW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be here tonight. I guess 
everybody is just really pleased to be back in Washington, DC and 
having to leave those wonderful districts we live in and come up to 
this place.
  But you know I am blessed. I live in Texas and I am glad to be here 
tonight so we can talk about something, again, about a subject I have 
been talking about in various degrees for about 19 months now and that 
is we do have a rule of law that is the underpinning of our society. We 
started, when we decided to create this great Republic, we started, 
decided that we would codify that rule of law and one of the best 
written documents on the face of the Earth, I happen to have a little 
copy of it right here, in pocket size form, the Constitution of the 
United States.
  In this Constitution of the United States, we not only set out how 
the newly formed union of the States would operate with a newly formed 
national government, but it set out how this body would operate, how 
the executive branch would operate, how the judiciary would operate.
  In my lifetime, I have been blessed by my neighbors because we elect 
our judges as well as our Representatives. In Texas, I have been 
blessed by my neighbors to serve in two branches of our government, 
because with the basic Constitution of the United States establishing a 
legislative branch, an executive branch and a judicial branch, all the 
States basically follow that same general guideline and now, around the 
world, democracies that have sprung up from this longest lived 
democratic process called the United States Government, the Republic 
that we created for the United States. Others have, using various forms 
of democracy, have followed the general pattern.
  When we talk to a young kid like a, let's say, an elementary school, 
kindergarten, up to sixth-grade student, talk about the three branches 
of government, you talk about the legislative branch that writes the 
laws, the executive branch that enforces the laws that the legislature 
wrote and the judicial branch, which enforces the law and interprets 
the law. Now that's basically what we talk about here. It's very 
simple, and it's very real, and that's really what we are supposed to 
have here.
  One of our jobs, as guardians of this document called the 
Constitution, and this system we call the United States of America, and 
its Federal Government, one of the things we have a responsibility to 
do is we have a responsibility to stay in check and balance on the 
other part of the three branches of the government. The judiciary has 
got checks and balances on both the executive and the legislative. The 
legislative has checks and balances on the judiciary and the executive. 
The executive adds checks and balances to the appointment process on 
the judiciary and the legislative.
  So our Founding Fathers said not only are we going to have these 
three branches of government, but it's the responsibility of those 
branches to make sure other branches aren't going haywire, because they 
come from the place of government where the branch of government went 
haywire all the time and they were fed up with autocratic kings and the 
royalty of the various nations that they had come from to come across 
the oceans of the United States, and they wanted to make sure that 
nobody dominated, stepped on each other's toes.
  I have been talking about the fact that all of this falls under that 
great category that we sort of envisioned, now the world needs and 
adopts, and that is the rule of law. A civil society cannot operate 
without rules, not only that police the society, but that the society 
can count on as they move through commerce or through interaction with 
other human beings to be the rules that you play by.
  Just like Americans love our games, baseball, basketball, football, 
not necessarily in that order, and other games, we love our games, and 
we want to make sure, and we are the first ones to jump up and scream, 
they are breaking the rules, because you can't play the game without 
rules. This body here has a real responsibility to create those rules. 
We write laws which are the Big Brothers, the rules, and we give 
rulemaking authority to people, but authority comes from this Congress.
  So having that glue the whole society, now you ask me well, yes, that 
may sound good for America but not everybody needs that. Well, let me 
ask you something, if you are going to go make a deal with your 
neighbor over the boundary line between your property in some country 
in Central America, and you are trying to make, to determine where this 
boundary line is

[[Page 15638]]

and you find out you don't have any rules about titles to property, so 
nobody really knows where the boundaries are, how do you solve that 
problem?
  Well, you could solve it by whoever had the biggest stick and go beat 
each other's brains out and whoever won will get to decide where the 
property line is. But that's not the rule of law. That's the rule of 
terrorism or the rule of violence.
  Now it's that one simple thing of a way to register property in a 
country gives people a place to go to discuss where something simple 
like is that tree in my yard or is that tree in your yard, between 
neighbors, and they don't have to bash each other's brains out over the 
issue. Now that may be simplistic, but that's about as easy as I can 
make it. Yet, believe me, people bash each other's brains out if they 
don't have a place to go to resolve something simple like that. All you 
have got to do is be a municipal court judge in a city in Texas and you 
might find out a little bit about that.
  So my point is the reason we have these rules is so that our society 
can function in a civil manner, and the reason we have responsibility 
to police up the other branches of government is to settle these 
debates.

                              {time}  1930

  And we have had these fights for a long time. They are part of our 
constitutional law of the United States.
  We have a poster here just on the Cherokee issue, and, whether or not 
to the right or wrong of the Cherokee issue, this came down to a 
dispute between the Supreme Court and the Executive, the President. In 
this particular situation, Chief Justice Marshall, John Marshall, one 
of the most famous, if not the most famous Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court, had ruled in a way that Andrew Jackson, the President of the 
United States, didn't like. And the big issue was Marshall has made his 
decision, now let him enforce it.
  Now why is that something we ought to start talking about? Because 
this is the reverse situation of what I'm going to talk about tonight. 
The President of the United States is basically saying, ``I am not 
going to enforce the law. The courts have determined what the law is 
and what the law means, but I'm not going to enforce it. I'm going to 
do it my way.''
  And basically, Worcester v. Georgia settled that issue. The President 
of the United States has the obligation, from his oath of office, to 
enforce the law. Andrew Jackson was famously stubborn, and it was a big 
problem in its time.
  Now, one of the things I want to talk about today that I think 
worries me a lot about the rule of law is that various Congresses over 
various years have written a whole body of law concerning the 
immigration and naturalization laws of the United States of America.
  These days, our media, in an attempt to give their own definition to 
people's intents, the minute you want to start talking about issues 
like this, there is going to be somebody that is going to try to call 
you a racist or a bigot or whatever. I'm talking about the facts. We 
have a set of laws about immigration. And I'm not talking about 
immigration from any particular country. I'm talking about immigration 
from all countries.
  And we have a way to become a naturalized American citizen and have 
the rights of an American citizen imposed upon you; and those laws are 
set out in statutes, and they tell you there are things that are 
against the law. And one of the things they tell you is it's against 
the law to enter the United States without permission.
  Now, in an attempt to get away from my heritage, where I come from, 
I'm from Texas. We have the largest amount of border of any State in 
the Union with the country of Mexico. We have a long and sometimes 
rocky history as a State. And prior to being a State, as a Republic of 
Texas and, prior to that, as a colony of Mexico, we have a long and 
sometimes rocky history with the country of Mexico. But today, in 
today's present 21st century, most Texans, either born or those who 
have moved there, consider the northern parts of Mexico like home. I 
mean we have a very, very solid, strong relationship with the people of 
Mexico.
  This is not about Mexicans, or it's not about Hispanics, or it's not 
about the Irish. There were people up here that wanted to free the 
Irish. It's about the law. We have written laws that say if you come 
into our country illegally or if you overstay a visa that got you here 
legally but when it expired you then had to leave and you didn't leave, 
if you did those things, then you have broken our laws. Now, some 
people think that is too strict; other people think it is not strict 
enough. But the bottom line is it has broken the law.
  The President of the United States, Barack Obama, in the very recent 
past, by Executive order, basically decided to tell the courts and the 
judicial system established to enforce the immigration laws, the 
immigration judiciary system, that they were to ignore or dismiss, and 
they are dismissing approximately 17,000 cases that the administration 
has determined they shouldn't go forward on.
  Now, what does this do? A good friend of mine has joined me today, 
Mr. Bilirakis from Florida, and he is one of the people who stood up 
when all this happened and said what I have been saying on a lot of 
issues in this House: Wait a minute. What is going on? What about the 
written rules? What about the immigration naturalization laws?
  I believe Mr. Bilirakis is on the committee that is responsible for 
looking into those things. So I'm going to recognize my friend from 
Florida to make at least a small comment on how he views this issue, 
starting off with the issue of the President's announcing certain 
people, they would no longer enforce the law against those people.
  Mr. BILIRAKIS. Thank you, Mr. Carter. I appreciate it.
  With growing violence and drug trafficking, Mr. Carter, in Mexico and 
a homegrown terrorist threat, we have to crack down on illegal 
immigration for our Nation's security.
  I welcome those who enter this country through the legal means. As a 
matter of fact, my grandparents came here in the early 1900s. But 
illegal immigration is illegal, as you said. No matter how well behaved 
the person is, they are still breaking the law. As far as I'm 
concerned, those are the laws, and we must obey them.
  As the former heads of the 9/11 Commission found in a recent report, 
immigrants and domestic terrorists now pose a threat to the United 
States. Today's terrorist is harder to identify, so it is vital that 
DHS is proactive along our borders.
  There continues to be evidence that terrorist groups are 
collaborating with drug cartels along the U.S. border, as my colleague 
Sue Myrick reported in a recent Washington Times article. This is 
especially troubling given the rise of homegrown and immigrant 
terrorism highlighted by the 9/11 Commission.
  In recent weeks, several memos have been released or leaked outlining 
plans for rewarding illegal immigrants. The first, a memo by the Bureau 
of Citizenship and Immigration Services under Homeland Security, 
detailed ways to grant mass amnesty to illegal immigrants without any 
kind of legislative action. At the core, this is a separation of powers 
issue. As you stated, it must go through the legislative process. This 
is an arrogant, in my opinion, an arrogant and dangerous alternative to 
having Congress act on the issue.
  To grant amnesty to illegal immigrants undermines our immigration 
laws and is a slap in the face to those who go through the process of 
entering our country legally. And to do this by skipping the 
legislative process, as the Department of Homeland Security memo 
indicates, is wrong. It's clearly wrong.
  Following the memo's release, Candice Miller and I wrote a letter to 
Secretary Napolitano demanding clarification and to see if this memo 
reflects the Department's or the White House's policy plans. The 
response was basically a nonresponse, Mr. Carter.
  Another memo, highlighted by an article in the Houston Chronicle--you 
may have mentioned this--outlined the possibility of dismissing--and I 
think you did mention this--17,000 deportation cases and releasing the 
offenders

[[Page 15639]]

into the United States. What kind of precedent are we setting?
  And a third idea from DHS involves focusing on illegal immigrants who 
commit more serious crimes; so, in other words, getting them off and 
ignoring those who commit ``minor'' infractions. So, in other words, 
focus on the ones that committed the serious crimes, but the ``minor'' 
infractions will be let off.
  Again, what kind of a precedent are we setting?
  I have asked for hearings, Mr. Carter, on this. I know you know this. 
And I serve on the Homeland Security Committee, and I am the ranking 
member of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. We asked for 
hearings to find out more about the intent of these memos. And I'm 
waiting for a response. I have not received one so far.
  But these plans and memos aren't the only actions the administration 
is taking to seemingly undermine immigration security. The 
administration has taken to suing State governments, specifically the 
State of Arizona, for trying to enforce immigration laws.
  The administration needs to take real action, in my opinion. It needs 
to send more enforcement to the border. Sending a few hundred extra 
troops to the border is not enough to protect 2,000 miles.

                              {time}  1940

  DHS needs to improve technology along the border to help the border 
agents police the terrain. And it needs to improve its visa screening 
process.
  Over the past several years, there have been multiple instances that 
demonstrate shortcomings in the visa screening process. I have 
sponsored legislation to strengthen and ensure better screening and 
monitoring of foreign students once they are in the country.
  DHS also identified several high-risk areas around the world in the 
early 2000s where we need visa security units to properly screen our 
applicants. We have been very slow, and they have not been implemented. 
There are between 15 and 20 in place, out of several high-risk areas 
identified around the world. Currently, less than a quarter, as I said, 
of the high-risk visa issuing locations around the world have these 
visa security units, and I think that is unacceptable as well.
  I also have introduced legislation to expand a Coast Guard program 
that collects biometric information on interdicted aliens and checks to 
make sure that they have not repeatedly tried to enter the country. I 
believe that is currently in the Senate. It was passed in the House, 
and it is waiting for action in the Senate.
  Congress can prevent States from issuing driver's licenses to illegal 
aliens, stop birthright citizenship, and end funding for sanctuary 
cities. We also need to strengthen interior enforcement and penalize 
employers who hire illegal immigrants.
  There are many measures that Congress or DHS can take to help secure 
our borders and protect the country. But the amnesty plans Mr. Carter 
has outlined tonight are not the right way to go, and frankly stand on 
shaky constitutional ground.
  I thank you, Mr. Carter, and I pledge to continue working with you on 
this issue.
  Mr. CARTER. Thank you, and I reclaim my time.
  The point is legislation is the proper way for us to deal with this 
problem. This Congress is the place where we make decisions on how we 
change our immigration laws. They are written by this Congress, and 
they should be changed, if they need to be changed, by this Congress.
  I don't understand why the President of the United States thinks he 
must arbitrarily grant what turns out to be a de facto amnesty because 
his party controls this House and will until the end of this year 
control this House. We still have weeks left on this session of 
Congress, and there is a possibility we can come back after the 
elections and have another session of Congress before the end of this 
year. If this immigration issue needs to be taken up, it should have 
been taken up by the Congress. But there seems to be this idea that the 
President of the United States has the type of powers that he can, with 
the stroke of a pen, set aside contracts; and with the stroke of a pen 
set aside the laws of this country; and with the stroke of a pen ignore 
orders of our court system. I just don't think the world or our laws 
allow the executive branch to be able to do that. It is not like this 
thing wasn't telegraphed before.
  Recently, we had one of the worst oil spill disasters in the history 
of our country. And the President of the United States declared at one 
time a gulf-wide moratorium on drilling in the gulf. At that time, 
there were hundreds of drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico operating. 
And at that time, both shallow water and deep water, they shut it down 
by the President declaring a moratorium.
  Now how do we learn how we do things in this country? We either read 
them in our laws, we are instructed in the precedents that are set by 
the courts, and we ought to look at the history of how we operated in 
the past. That would make common sense. So before we look at whether 
the President overstepped his individual authority by declaring a 
moratorium, the question would come, has anybody that was President of 
the United States ever declared a moratorium on drilling before? And 
the answer is, yes. His name was Richard Nixon, a Republican.
  Now let's look at how Richard Nixon went about getting a moratorium 
to stop drilling off the coast of California. Did he make an individual 
dictate from his own pen and say, I hereby declare you can no longer 
drill? No. What did he do? He went to the Congress of the United States 
and said to the Congress, we need to have a ban or moratorium on 
drilling off the coast of California. And this deliberative body held 
hearings, I assume. I haven't delved into it that much, but I do know 
that the Congress and the President issued a moratorium on drilling off 
the coast of California. And to my knowledge, that moratorium is still 
in place. And whether or not it was tested in the court systems, I have 
no idea. But I would assume it was, because if there was anybody 
drilling at the time, they probably felt like their contract rights 
were stepped on. And I am sure the court ruled on it. And the court 
must have ruled in favor of the Congress and the President because the 
moratorium is still in place.
  So what does that tell us about the right way to declare a 
moratorium? Well, the right way is to go to the Congress, and with the 
Congress put forth the Congress declaring a moratorium and the 
President enforcing that moratorium. That is the way it is supposed to 
operate. If you read this little book, the Constitution of the United 
States, that is what it says.
  This is not what we did. The President of the United States 
unilaterally said we are declaring a moratorium. He was joined by his 
Secretary of Energy, I believe, but it was taken to court and a Federal 
judge overturned the Obama administration's initial 6 months of 
moratorium and rejected the government's bid to have the court 
challenge thrown out. The government lawyers argued that the lawsuit 
filed by several offshore service companies on the May 28 moratorium 
was moot because the Interior Department imposed a new drilling 
moratorium. What is the Interior Department? Is it a creation, is it a 
department of the Congress? Nope. It is a department of the executive 
branch of the Federal Government. Who appoints the Interior Secretary? 
The President of the United States appoints with the advice and consent 
of the Senate. That is how we get the head of the Interior Department.
  Now I can't speak for the Interior czar because the Interior czar 
doesn't have to go through that vetting process; he must answer only to 
the President of the United States, but we have now approaching 40 
czars, and I don't know what they do except draw a paycheck. But they 
answer to the President. But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman 
rejected that argument, saying the second moratorium arguably fashions 
no substantial changes from the first.
  Now, when a judge grants an injunction and says, one side over the 
other, this side is right to seek relief from the

[[Page 15640]]

court in the form of an injunctive process, and you are enjoined, you 
are stopped from doing the behavior you were doing. And that is 
basically what this court said to the President of the United States. 
It said you can't do this. But they did it anyway. Where that is in the 
court system, I don't know. But it is blatantly standing forward. Not 
only is it bypassing the legislative process, which is the normal way 
by precedent to get a moratorium on drilling in America, because that 
is the way it has been done in the past, but then when the court says 
hey, you can't do it, they did it anyway. And now by playing regulatory 
games and giving favors to some and maybe not favors to others, and I 
don't know anything about that part of the game playing; I know that 
some people seem to be getting permits and some people seem to be not 
getting permits, and whether or not there is a moratorium in shallow 
water depends on who you talk to. But I can tell you, the deepwater 
folks seem to still be shut down.

                              {time}  1950

  Now, there is a reason we ought to go to the Congress. One of the 
reasons is that every seat that you see in this House of 
Representatives is filled with a person who represents at this time 
652,000 Americans. So that person speaks for and votes for 652,000 
Americans. If a choice is going to be made to shut down the production 
of approximately 20 percent of the oil and gas production a year in the 
United States, which is what the gulf produces, approximately 20 
percent, then the American people probably would think this could have 
an effect on jobs, that it could have an effect on the cost of fuel and 
that it could have an effect on their standard of living. It may be 
they would like their Members of Congress to be able to have something 
to say about shutting down 20 percent of the production of petroleum 
and natural gas in the United States.
  Especially in light of a recession, I would think they would want 
their individual Members of Congress to be very vocal about how their 
Representatives have represented them and would ask, What's this going 
to do to my job? What's this going to do to this economy? How much is 
this going to hurt us? How much more dependent is it going to put us on 
foreign oil? With these questions, that's why Nixon went to Congress 
for a moratorium, because the people in Congress spoke for the people 
of the United States. That's the way it's set up. The House of 
Representatives represents the people.
  We didn't go through that process for this moratorium. We had the 
White House and President Barack Obama basically declare a moratorium.
  You will do what I say. You will not drill in the gulf.
  The court said, You can't do that, partner.
  So then he had the Interior Department saying, You can't drill in the 
gulf. I assume the concept behind the Interior Department is that the 
leases that they were drilling on were Interior leases. That's the way 
I understand it.
  Then wait a minute. If you paid for that lease and if part of the 
contract you made with the government was, if you paid them money for 
their lease--sometimes millions of dollars for a lease--and then you 
went out there and drilled on that lease and you didn't find any oil, 
the Interior Department would kind of say, Well, better luck next time. 
Thanks for your million bucks. If you find oil, then the Interior 
Department is supposed to say, Well, congratulations. Although, there 
are those in this body who would say, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. 
Now, if you've found oil, you've got to give us more money; but the 
laws of contracts have something to do with that--once again, the rule 
of law.
  So we were talking about this problem with drilling offshore. We had 
sort of a one-man show of a moratorium, and the courts have disputed 
it.
  Now the President of the United States is taking off, and the Justice 
Department is going after one of our States by taking it to U.N. Human 
Rights Council and arguing that a law in the State of Arizona should be 
taken before some body that should have no authority over this country, 
and they'll ask them to call us human rights violators and call the 
State of Arizona human rights violators. They have also taken the State 
of Arizona to court for a law that they wrote, which tracks almost 
identically a Federal law that the Department of Homeland Security is 
supposed to be enforcing but is not. Therefore, Arizona got tired of 
the invasion of their State and said, if the Feds aren't going to 
enforce this law, then we'll write it just like the Federal law, and 
we'll ask our folks to enforce it because somebody has got to stand up 
for the people of Arizona.
  I'm not here to debate that. I'm here just to point out that all of 
this type of thinking comes down to the concept that the executive 
branch of the government can do what it wants to. It doesn't have to 
consult with Congress. Sure, Congress wrote laws which state it's 
illegal to come into this country without permission, but we think that 
there are at least 17,000 first-time cases. There may be more. Though, 
starting with around 17,000 people, we're just going to decide to 
dismiss the cases against them.
  Now let's think about that. There is a judicial process where the 
folks who come into this country illegally get caught. There is a 
judicial process that can determine whether or not they should be 
deported from this country. It's very similar to the judicial process 
you're all familiar with in this House and all over the country about 
what goes on in the courtroom.
  You have a trier of fact who determines what the facts are in the 
case, and you have law that is written and precedents that are 
established which tell you what the remedies are to resolve the issue. 
Then there is a trier of fact, the trier of the law, who comes up with 
a resolution of the issue. Whether it be an immigration judge or 
whether it be a Federal district judge, there is an issue that is 
resolved.
  True, true, the prosecution can dismiss a case, but to have the 
executive branch of the government direct the Justice Department, which 
is supposedly our lawyer, to randomly dismiss cases and then make the 
statement ``we're only going after criminal aliens,'' well, let me tell 
you something about criminal aliens so you've got a really clear 
picture of this. I have tried to talk with the Homeland Security 
Department about this because I happen to serve on the Appropriations 
Committee for Homeland Security.
  If your definition of a ``criminal alien'' is someone who is a felon, 
then you can't under the Constitution of the United States declare 
someone to be a felon until that person has been convicted of a crime 
by a court. Otherwise, there is something called the ``presumption of 
innocence,'' and until a court declares you guilty, you are innocent. 
So, even though somebody walks in here and shoots everybody in this 
room on national television, that person is still innocent until a 
court says he's guilty.
  So you're saying we're going to go after criminal aliens. If you're 
going to call them ``criminal aliens,'' they have to be convicted by a 
court. Now, if they are convicted by a court, it's a pretty good chance 
they're in prison.
  Now, let me ask you--and you don't have to be a legal scholar; you 
don't have to be a former judge; you don't even have to have ever 
served on a jury. By just using the good old American commonsense, if 
all of the criminal aliens--or let's just say 95 percent of those 
convicted of a crime as criminal aliens are in jail or are in prison, 
how hard are they to find? I mean is it really a task to find out where 
they are?
  I come from Williamson County in Texas. We have a great big jail in 
Williamson County. I promise you that you can pick up the phone and 
call our great sheriff and ask, Sheriff, how many convicted illegal 
aliens have you got in your jail?
  He'll say, I can give you a list of people I think are illegal, but I 
haven't asked them.
  So let's just assume that the sheriff's wise ideas are even 
inaccurate a little bit. You're still going to pick up a number of 
them. How hard is it to catch them? Go to the jail; go to their cells; 
unlock the doors and take them.

[[Page 15641]]

That's how hard it is to catch them. They're in custody. They've 
dedicated the entire program of ICE to one proposition--deporting 
illegal aliens who are criminals. They don't have to go out and chase 
anybody. They've got them all incarcerated.

                              {time}  2000

  It's not that hard, but that's what the target is for this year. And 
it sounds great on television, but the truth is, I think anybody that 
is a normal American wouldn't even consider releasing somebody that has 
been to prison for some serious crime. Of course if you have the chance 
to deport them, you want to deport them; but here's something that's 
kind of interesting: there is a sector of the border--and the Homeland 
folks and the border patrol divide the areas up by sectors, and this is 
called the Del Rio sector. And in the Del Rio sector, we started a 
thing called Operation Streamline with the cooperation of the judges 
and the courts and the prosecutors. And let me tell you, this isn't 
easy, it's hard work, and these people are to be commended for what 
they do.
  But they set up a process that those people caught coming across our 
border in the Del Rio section of the border would go before a judge and 
have a hearing, every one of them. Now, you say why is that a big deal? 
Well, because the President of the United States and the Homeland 
Security Department just declared 17,000 people will never go before a 
judge, not on that issue. Unless they re-file the cases--which is done 
with prejudice so they can come back and re-file the cases--but unless 
they re-file the cases, these people will never answer to a court.
  But why would you want them to answer to a court, courts are so 
crowded? Sure, but some judges who are willing to work hard to do 
what's right by the law in the Del Rio sector have made the Del Rio 
sector the least border-crossed area on the border. Why? Because there 
is something about looking a judge straight in the eye and they tell 
you, Sir, or madam, you have violated the laws of the United States by 
coming across our border, that makes those people say I'm not going to 
see that judge again, I'm going to cross someplace else.
  Now, maybe we should be setting up a system like that to cover our 
whole border, maybe that would help a whole lot, and we should provide 
the resources to do it.
  But the real point comes back to at least 17,000 people will never 
look that judge in the eye based upon the actions of the Obama 
administration. And some of those people may have gone back across and 
applied to come in legally. We are the only country in the world that 
brings in 1 million foreigners a year into our country legally. There 
isn't anybody who can match us; nobody can even come close in the 
entire world. The United States opens our doors to 1 million people 
that follow the rules and come into this country. Yes, you can call it 
compassion, but it is random compassion. Who said these people, 
determined by the White House, are more deserving of compassion than 
these people over here because we've got, according to most of the 
estimates, between 12 and 20 million of these people in our country? So 
who decides we pick 17,000? And are we starting a policy that everybody 
that is awaiting a hearing in an immigration court will just be 
excused. Is that the new policy? So 17 is just a start? Well, I don't 
know, we don't have an answer to that.
  But the real question we have to be concerned about is, who made the 
executive branch so independent to operate that they can shut down 
things like drilling in the gulf and turn loose people who have pending 
court cases on their say so without any consultation or action by the 
legislative branch of the government or any declaration for enforcement 
by the judicial branch of the government? I think that's a rule-of-law 
question that we in this House ought to be talking about. I don't 
think, when we wrote this Constitution of the United States, we ever 
envisioned giving that kind of power to any individual person or even 
to any branch of the government.
  And I think we have reason to show real concern when we read 
something like this in the Houston Chronicle: ``Culling the immigration 
court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston 
about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys.'' I'm 
sure it stunned them because they are no longer going to get a fee. But 
in addition to that, they got benefits they never even sought because 
they weren't seeking dismissals. They were seeking probably things 
like--well, I won't go into that--other remedies in the court. They got 
the cases dismissed without even knowing they were going to be 
dismissed, and they are as confused as everybody else is.
  Now, I'm not saying it wasn't done for the right reason. I don't know 
why it was done. I don't know who makes the random pick of 17,000 
people out of 20 million. Who makes that choice? Is that the choice 
that one individual we need to have make? Is it the immigration czar 
that decides who gets that and who doesn't? Or is it the Secretary of 
Homeland Security? Or is it the President of the United States? And 
under what authority do they have the right to do this? And is it the 
kind of world you want to live in where one person has the ability to 
make a decision that basically sidesteps the judicial system in the 
country because they like you? Or whatever they do; we don't know why 
they did it.
  Do we want the President of the United States coming into the 
judicial system of the country and saying, you know what? We've got so 
many criminal cases pending, they are just too crowded, the docket, 
we're going to dismiss all but the murder cases because we really think 
the only thing that is really serious is murder. So wipe out the rest. 
I mean, that seems ridiculous--and it is ridiculous--but at what point 
does that authority, not granted by any other source to one man, what 
curtails it unless we ask about it and we ask what law allows this to 
happen? Who gets to make these decisions to circumvent the written law 
of the United States and why do they get that decision-making process?
  There may be a good answer; I haven't heard one. And those who have 
questioned it in the press and those who have questioned it with 
letters, such as Mr. Bilirakis and Marsha Blackburn--another great 
Member of Congress--have asked that question and it's my understanding 
have not received any answers. By what authority is this done?
  And I may be the only voice talking here tonight, but every country 
ought to have somebody and every State ought to have somebody standing 
up and asking these questions because the only supreme authority other 
than God Almighty is this Constitution of the United States. In this 
document and the offshoots of this document lies the power of the 
people who serve up here in Washington, DC and around the country. So 
this is serious stuff we are talking about, the rule of law, and it's 
stuff we ought to worry about.
  Finally, I want to say that the really sad thing that is being 
reported in some of these newspaper articles is that this is deferred 
action, which really concerns me for those of us who have been trying 
to actually come up with real solutions to be fair and yet be just to 
all Americans, and just have possibly one of the tools that could have 
been used by this Congress established by the written document called 
the law, possibly taken away from us because of the bad taste it's 
going to leave in the American public's mouth.
  I'm very concerned about that because, quite honestly, it was one of 
the possible solutions we could deal with. But I'm not going to go into 
that other than to say I hope that when we do finally sit down and do a 
compassionate solution to the immigration problem that takes into 
consideration not only the invading immigrants, but takes into 
consideration the rest of the country that it has invaded to come up 
with a solution to this problem, that we haven't in some way, by the 
actions of the White House, tainted one method that might have been 
used to start to correct some portion of the problem.

[[Page 15642]]



                              {time}  2010

  Finally let me say, the reason there's passion in my State on this 
issue is because more people died in the war run by the cartels across 
the border. Right across the border, a hundred yards from American 
citizens who live along the border, there have been, I think it's 
something like 25,000 people murdered, which is way more than the 
casualty rate for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Police officers and police officials, mayors, anyone who stands up 
and says, ``We ought to enforce the law over here,'' is killed, maimed, 
butchered, beheaded. And anarchy reigns--not because of the good 
intention of the Mexican Government; because of the evil that permeates 
the lawlessness on the Mexican-U.S. border.
  And we have to be concerned about what's happening on our borders. 
All of us in this country have to be concerned, because that evil is 
there, and it's just, in Texas, a swim across the river away; in 
Arizona or New Mexico, it's one footstep away from being in one of our 
States and then across the country. And some of these drug gangs now 
have agents in every major and minor city in this country. MS-13 and 
other gangs like that, the study shows they have spread across the 
Nation.
  So when we're talking about, yes, we've got lots of issues that have 
to do with good folks who live good lives and they're here illegally, 
we need to work on that. But don't ever forget, if you give up a 
portion of the law, you could lose it all. And when you lose it all, 
who's going to stand between you and the bad guys?
  And that's why we've got to keep talking about the rule of law is the 
glue that holds our society together. And if we give it up, whether it 
is for what is viewed today as a compassionate, goodwill reason or not, 
if we give up the strength of the law that keeps our society together, 
we weaken our society. And then ultimately those people who would do 
you harm through violence and terror will be able to control the world 
we live in.
  That's why our soldiers go to war to fight across the ocean to 
prevent that from happening in our country and to help countries where 
it is happening to establish rule of law so they can prevent the 
destruction of their society. That's why great American soldiers go 
fight those wars. That's why we have the police force and the fire 
department and all of these other departments that protect us.
  But if you take away the tools by some group deciding we can just, by 
the stroke of a pen, eliminate a certain bunch of rules we don't like, 
where does it stop?
  This is a serious issue of the rule of law. I raise it for discussion 
among the Members of this House and among the people of this country. 
Is this the way we make it better for our lives?
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________