[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13619-13620]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE BORDER CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of weeks, many of 
us have visited my home State and have gone to places where I have gone 
over the decades of service and living in Texas, and that is to our 
great neighbors who live on the border. Many great citizens of the 
State of Texas and of the great country in which we live, they have 
lived and worked and played, and they have created an economic engine, 
cities like Brownsville, Laredo, Harlingen, McAllen, and many others. 
And they have, in fact, experienced over the years an influx of 
individuals coming to do harm.
  As a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee and a member 
who has served as chairwoman and ranking member on a number of 
subcommittees, we have made great strides.
  I am reminded of the low number of Border Patrol agents some many 
years ago, and now we are upwards to 25,000 hardworking Americans who 
serve on both the northern and southern borders.
  They have met the challenge of a serious influx. First, the drug 
cartels. The violence on the Mexican side of the border. We have come 
together with Mexican Presidents and have worked with the Mexican 
national defense forces, and we have quashed, to a certain extent, the 
extensive violence. But yet, our Federal agents of the ATF, the DEA, 
FBI, and certainly other collaborative efforts have worked to bring 
this violence down.
  We take note of the fact that El Paso is noted as the safest city in 
the United States, and it is on the border. We note that a great deal 
of commerce comes through the southern border, as it does the northern 
border.
  Over the last couple of weeks, beginning maybe in 2013, we saw a new 
phenomenon, an unplanned phenomenon, a phenomenon driven by the 
devastating and destructive elements found in Honduras, El Salvador, 
Guatemala, and Central America, none of which were driven by a pointed 
pronouncement from the United States or the President of the United 
States, President Barack Obama. But elements who wanted to misuse and 
abuse the need for comprehensive immigration reform decided to 
misrepresent the laws of the United States of America.
  Every Member of Congress has adhered to a particular theme. I started 
using it in the 1990s. We are a Nation of laws and a Nation of 
immigrants. And the laws are intended to be used to instruct how we 
guide our hearts and our laws. We still have the Statue of Liberty in 
the harbor of New York that says, we welcome the forlorn and those who 
are in need.
  Unfortunately, bad information was given to desperate people. Let me 
say that again, Mr. Speaker: desperate people. Desperate mothers and 
fathers who saw the beheading of young people, or people in their 
neighborhood threatened by MS-13 and other horrific gangs who say, if 
your child does not join, your child will be killed, or your little 
girl will be raped. Or maybe the 3-year-old that I saw down in 
Brownsville with a diaper on was given to someone just to save her 
life.
  That is the misnomer and the abuse that has been going on in the 
debate here. These are the real lives of children who fled with a more 
than credible fear of the loss of life. I am so disappointed sometimes 
in how we can reinvent truth, and that is that these children are 
fleeing because of what President Obama represented. That is not true. 
And it is important to tell the American people the truth.
  They were fleeing because of the sheer unbelievable violence, insane 
violence, mixed in with the mistruths and misrepresentations of those 
who just wanted to make money and abuse the system. So now we have the 
surge, maybe 50,000 plus here in the United States. And we have to do 
something about it.
  I listened to three young people yesterday. Most of us have not heard 
from the children because we were protecting the children's privacy. 
But these youngsters explained the arduous journey that they took and 
how they came here for nothing more than a better life, and that 
violence was all around them.
  Yes, we need to work with Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador. But 
we started out trying to do what was right. The President offered a 
supplemental. He knew it was right to have

[[Page 13620]]

funding for the wilderness funding. He knew it was right to give the 
Border Patrol agents their appropriate moneys, and he knew it was right 
for enforcement to add more judges.
  But what I would say is, what we have on the floor now, Mr. Speaker, 
is a pitiful example in H.R. 5230. This is a bad emergency 
supplemental. It is not even that. It is not worth voting for. America 
is better than this, and we need to do better than this with the 
supplemental to help these children and help America.

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