[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9975-9979]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           TERRORIST ACTIVITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Massie). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, a great deal has been going on in the last 
24 hours--a lot of surprises--which help make life interesting.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to call to attention, again, the human tragedy 
that has arisen in Africa--and Nigeria specifically--as I was there at 
the end of last week for a couple of days meeting with some of the 
mothers of girls who were kidnapped.
  There was an excellent story in The Blaze done by Sara Carter today 
where she says:

       Precious and Hope--two girls' names--ran for their lives 
     through the thick brush of the Nigerian forest. They could 
     feel their hearts pounding, their bare feet scraped from the

[[Page 9976]]

     rocks, and their legs throbbing from the thorns that 
     penetrated their skin as they crawled low through the tangle 
     to avoid detection.

                              {time}  1915

       They were running from the armed Islamist fighters who had 
     seized them and approximately 300 other schoolgirls from what 
     they had believed was the safety of their boarding school in 
     Chibok, Nigeria, in one of the most brazen mass kidnappings 
     in history. Only the night before, the two 15-year-olds had 
     been sleeping peacefully. It was mid-April, and many of the 
     girls had chosen to try to stay cool by sleeping underneath 
     the night sky in only their shirts and undergarments while 
     others left the windows of their dormitories wide open to 
     stave off the humidity. What they didn't expect shortly after 
     they closed their eyes was that their world would soon be 
     turned upside down.
       This is the story of the night that Precious and Hope were 
     taken by Boko Haram and about their against-all-odds escape 
     the next day while so many of their classmates remain 
     missing.

  I have met those girls, Mr. Speaker, and they are precious, hopeful 
girls, but their hearts have been quite broken. Even though they have 
escaped, they have had many nightmares when they have lain down, 
because they have realized that what happened to them is happening to 
their friends every day.
  I did ask one of the pastors from Chibok, whom I met there--who was 
trying to assist the families, the mothers and the three girls who had 
escaped--what happened to the men? What happened to the fathers? I was 
told that so many of them feel so helpless and that they feel so guilty 
because now they don't even know where their girls are, but they know 
what is happening to them every day, and they can't stand the thought 
of what is happening to their daughters every day and what they know is 
happening. Many of the fathers don't feel worthy to be sleeping in 
their own homes, so they have gone into the bush to sleep, to be there 
while their daughters are suffering at the hands of these radical 
Islamists who think, somehow, they serve a god who thinks it is cute 
and it is funny, as one leader was laughing, talking about the sexual 
slavery of the girls and that they should be sold into sexual slavery.
  It is just sheer evil.
  I understand that moderate Muslims do not approve of this activity. I 
met and was with some moderate Muslims in Nigeria who understand how 
appalling and outrageous this activity is, but it is time moderate 
Muslims around the world actually stood up to the radical Islam that is 
doing so much damage in this world and is purveying so much evil. It is 
time they stood up.
  Counselors told me that they have had so much trouble in trying to 
help these mothers because they are so distraught, and what they have 
been told over and over and over again is that nobody cares; and if 
America ever came up, it was made clear that nobody in America cares 
and that they were certainly not going to come. So it has been very 
rough for them. I got an email today from one of the principals of the 
NGO unlikely heroes who is helping the families and the girls who have 
been able to escape so far, and she said even just one person from 
America coming has opened the doors to their having hope.
  Now, if one lowly, bald-headed guy from east Texas, just by going 
over and meeting with these women and children and meeting with the 
pastors and counselors, could provide hope sufficient to open the doors 
to so many more who have been victims--who thought it was hopeless and 
nobody cared now today and in the last few days coming forward--just 
think what could have happened if our beautiful First Lady had made a 
trip to Nigeria or if our President had even taken actions that got 
back to the families so they knew there was hope.
  The United States has no business going to war in Nigeria--we should 
not--but there are things that could be done without declaring war on a 
country when you find out that there is such a pervasive evil as Boko 
Haram, as al Qaeda, as radical Islam that wants to wipe the United 
States off the map and doesn't mind killing, repeatedly raping young 
girls, burning churches, burning homes, terrorizing people all because 
they had this sick, perverted idea that their god thinks that is good 
fun. It is time for moderate Muslims to stand up and to stand for the 
god they believe in. That would give even more hope.
  I took some pictures while I was there. I wasn't sure it was a good 
idea, but they said this is part of providing hope that somebody will 
take this to America and that others will understand, and then if they 
could see pictures of its being presented in Congress, that that would 
add even more hope and would help good people to rise up who have been 
victims for so long.
  America doesn't have to fight everybody's war, but they certainly 
have to do more than a hashtag and a Twitter. 43 and Twitters, as we 
saw, were not sufficient to stop Putin from invading the Crimea. 
Hashtags and Twitters were not sufficient to keep Boko Haram leaders 
from laughing at the sexual and horrible abuse of young girls who were 
kidnapped from school--girls they are still holding. At least President 
Clinton was willing to send a missile from time to time to try to send 
a message. In this administration, we have sent hashtags instead. It 
doesn't provide a whole lot of hope. They don't follow Twitter in the 
jungles of Nigeria.
  Mr. Speaker, these are many of the mothers of the girls who were 
kidnapped by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram. They were anxious, 
actually, to have a picture taken so that people could actually see and 
they wouldn't be forgotten. The faces of the minor girls have been 
blurred out. This woman here, Mr. Speaker, had two daughters who were 
kidnapped. She had great difficulty in talking about what happened the 
night they were kidnapped without falling to the floor and weeping 
bitterly. Their pastor over here on the far right is a devout Christian 
leader and is doing all he can to help the victims' families.
  This is that mother, Mr. Speaker, and the pastor. The counselor said 
just having someone come from the United States, put an arm around 
them, hug, and hold a hand has changed the outlook. Imagine what would 
happen if the authority of our administration did something besides 
Twitter.
  The pastor is a sweetheart of a man. He seemed so grateful. He said 
he knew what it meant that someone came all the way from America to 
show he cared.
  The face is blurred, but this is one of the children. They said she 
has had trouble doing a whole lot of anything but weeping and is in a 
deep, deep depression for her friends.
  Mr. Speaker, I do believe it is true--to whom much is given, of them 
much will be required. We have been blessed like no nation in the 
history of the world. Now, in one of the ways you provide hope--and it 
is throughout the Book of Proverbs, throughout the Bible, itself--
government is supposed to show impartiality and take care of those 
within its country.
  Some wonder, Well, gee. Aren't we supposed to help our neighbors? 
Neighbors could be from other countries. That is absolutely correct. As 
individuals, we are supposed to help our neighbors, and our neighbors 
can be from other countries, but there is a sworn obligation of 
government to help protect and keep the people safe within the 
country's borders.
  One of the reasons that it is helpful in a government role to reach 
out to people and give them hope to defeat their enemies and to stand 
up to their enemies is that, as President Bush used to say, I would 
much rather fight our enemies somewhere else instead of around our own 
homes. I would think that, as has been done in different places around 
the world, we can go to war, but you send a little help. For heaven's 
sake, in Libya, when we knew there were rebels who were supported by al 
Qaeda, we ended up having some kind of operation to send weapons in--
getting weapons to people we knew included al Qaeda.
  I have been wondering: How many of those weapons were being bandied 
about the night Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glen Doherty 
were killed?
  Yet we have nations that are friendly nations, that we know are not 
evil, are not possessed by evil, but are wanting

[[Page 9977]]

to fight evil--radical Islam--that is a threat to people in this 
country. Anywhere radical Islam exists, it exists with the belief that 
there should be a worldwide caliphate and that everyone, particularly 
in the Great Satan of America, should be destroyed or subjugated or, at 
the very best, made to pay a tax for the right to exist in another 
religion within Muslim country--if not killed or wiped out altogether.

                              {time}  1930

  I certainly won't forget those families in Nigeria. It is startling 
to think how much could be helped by doing something more than Twitter. 
That is no substitute for a foreign policy.
  Our moderate Muslim friends, our international atheist friends, our 
Christian friends, they feel like we ought to stand up against evil 
that ultimately would be a threat to us.
  I think people should not forget that the Taliban was defeated within 
a matter of short months in Afghanistan, without a single American loss 
of life, up to and including that famous ride uphill led by the 
Northern Alliance leader, General Dostum, whom I have met a number of 
times. The Taliban was routed and defeated. No American blood was shed 
to that point.
  There are ways to fight evil without going to war. But if you are not 
going to fight, for our soldiers, for our military members' sake, don't 
leave them stranded telling them to hold what they got when it may 
include IEDs.
  The lesson from Vietnam should have been, we are not going to send 
our military anywhere that we don't give them all of the weapons they 
need to fight, to win, and come home.
  We are not, never have been empire builders. Never have been. That is 
why the people in France still speak French. In Germany they speak 
German. In Italy they speak Italian, because we have never been about 
building an empire. We have been about liberty, freedom.
  We want to be left alone, but when evil raises its head, it is time 
to speak up.
  But the only way a nation can remain a nation very long and be 
effective, without giving way to complete corruption or chaos, is if 
the rule of law is observed impartially, across the board.
  And you can't have a law-abiding, effective nation where there are 
immigration laws that say, here is the process you must go through in 
order to get into our country. Over a million people a year go through 
that legal process, and more millions are standing in line to go 
through that process.
  All they see and hear is that America is no longer a nation of laws. 
America now just lets anybody come in who comes. And we ignore the law. 
We become as a temporary Third World nation, saying we are going to 
ignore the laws that have helped make us the greatest nation in the 
world.
  I still haven't heard from this administration any explanation as to 
why they might think that unaccompanied minors under 18 are flocking to 
our border like never before.
  As I have explained, Mr. Speaker, before, when the word spreads 
through Central America, South America that if you just come to 
America, we are not sending anybody home, and story after story says 
that people come and they get word back home, we came, and sure enough, 
they are not sending people home.
  For those in the administration who are not stupid, but are ignorant 
of what is going on, here is an article, translated from an El 
Salvadoran newspaper dated June 7. The headline, Mr. Speaker, is: ``USA 
Will Give Legal Assistance to Children Migrating Alone.''
  Well, that is incentive. Wow. It is really true. The newspaper said 
if you can just get your kids to the United States, the U.S. Government 
will give them legal assistance.
  The story is going back. It is not comfortable. Some people are lying 
in large rooms together, but food is being provided. Now they are going 
to provide legal assistance. Medical care, medical needs are provided 
because that is who we are.
  The problem is, you have to stop the humanitarian crisis by 
continuing to lure people into the United States by saying the United 
States law is United States law.
  Each of us in the Federal Government, Congress, and the 
administration, we have taken an oath to support and defend our 
Constitution, which means we follow our Federal laws, which means you 
have got to come into the United States legally.
  Some estimate that maybe a billion, billion and a half people want to 
come into the United States. That would overwhelm, destroy the United 
States. We have an obligation to make sure we bring people in in a 
rational, methodical way so that we don't destroy this great nation.
  So it seems to be a bit hypocritical for countries that don't allow 
near as many people in to their countries as we do, percentagewise or 
otherwise, to complain about unfair U.S. immigration laws.
  Well, there are some things that certainly need to be reformed, and 
we could get that done immediately once the President ever gets around 
to securing the border.
  But we have got to get back to following the law, to enforcing the 
law, or we are going to lose the country. With what is happening on our 
southern border, with what it is happening with the lawlessness in this 
city, people not only refusing to follow the law and follow their oath, 
but actually coming up with ways to encourage people to come violate 
our law even more by the thousands.
  Here's another article from an El Salvador newspaper from June 5: 
``Extension of Suspension of Student Deportation.'' So, the article 
here is making clear, yes, some came into the United States illegally, 
but the President is suspending enforcement of the laws he is sworn to 
uphold.
  He just did it by fiat. He announced it. So is it spoken, so is it 
written, so shall it be.
  That is what happens in a monarchy. That is not supposed to happen 
here. And if our friends down the other end of the hall in the Senate 
would stand with us, we could get back to observing the Constitution 
and protect the constitutional powers that are afforded to Congress and 
not to the other end here of Pennsylvania Avenue.
  It is time to stand up. And perhaps, if people in this administration 
were not so busy luring people in by their words and actions, luring 
them to violating U.S. law, then maybe they would have more time to 
send more than a Twitter to evil radical Islamists wreaking havoc 
around the world that will ultimately end up on our doorstep because 
they still consider us the Great Satan.
  Here is from a Honduran newspaper: ``U.S. Military Base in California 
Used to House Children.'' The article is translated from June 7. Going 
through and explaining how these kids came up unaccompanied. We didn't 
turn them back. We brought them in. We are taking care of them.
  Here is another article, though, from Houston. ``Breitbart Announces 
Border Security and Public Corruption Tip Line'':

       The U.S. Border Patrol has been overwhelmed. The Federal 
     Government is releasing thousands of illegal immigrants per 
     week.
       The information Washington, D.C., shares about the border 
     with the American people is often at odds with reality in the 
     region, and scores of foreign children were found to be 
     packed into holding cells on U.S. soil.
       Breitbart News has reported a near-steady stream of Mexican 
     cartel activity and criminal efforts across the United 
     States, reported on a plethora of corrupted U.S. officials 
     and law enforcement along or near the U.S.-Mexico border, and 
     reported countless tales of human suffering due to an often 
     wide open and unsecured border.
       Breitbart Texas is introducing a new tip line for Border 
     Patrol agents, Customs and Border Protection officers, other 
     law enforcement, and other citizens to expose the reality of 
     conditions along the U.S. Mexico border.
       ``The new tip line is for law enforcement or anyone who 
     wants to speak out on discrepancies between what Washington, 
     D.C., is saying and what is actually occurring on the 
     ground.''
       Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby said: 
     ``Whether you know of Mexican cartel-related corruption 
     occurring on U.S. soil, people or government officials 
     helping human trafficking, foreign children being kept in 
     horrible conditions or exploited, or simply feel the moral 
     obligation

[[Page 9978]]

     to tell Americans what is really occurring in the region, 
     this tip line is for you.''
       ``We are competent and able to handle and research these 
     matters,'' Darby said. ``Anyone can call in and email with 
     information, and we will do all we can to investigate and get 
     the word out.''

  The tip line number, the article says, is 877-204-2033. Breitbart 
Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby can be reached. Somebody is 
trying to make a difference.
  So then here is a story from The Washington Times by Cheryl Chumley: 
``Border Agents Warn of Chicken Pox, MRSA, Staph From Illegal Child 
Crossings.'' Border patrol agents who have already experienced scabies 
infestation from illegal border crossers now fear that thousands of 
children who are sweeping into the United States are bringing a host of 
new diseases and ailments of even more serious nature.
  ``We are starting to see chicken pox, MRSA, staph infections. We are 
starting to see different viruses,'' said Rio Grande Valley Border 
Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera.
  Meanwhile, agents are still fighting off the scabies, a highly 
contagious skin disease that causes massive itching due to burrowing 
mites.
  The article goes on: ``We have an obligation to our oath to this 
country, to those we are supposed to provide a common defense for, and 
it is pretty tragic what it happening now.''
  Here is a situation report from Thursday, May 29, RGV Sector Unified 
Coordination Group, EOC, and it goes through numbers, UACs, 
unaccompanied children, running through numbers of kids coming into the 
country illegally.
  Then as U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen has reported, the Department 
of Homeland Security has been engaging in human trafficking.

                              {time}  1945

  Come into the country, we will take you to your parents, even if they 
are illegally here. Leave your aunt, uncle, family. Come with human 
traffickers to the United States, and we will get you to wherever your 
parents will be. If you are coming and your parents are not with you, 
and they are not in the United States, hey, we will find somebody to 
take care of you.
  That is not the message that is literally being sent out by this 
administration, but that is certainly the message that is being 
communicated by our actions. As a result, the number of what this human 
smuggling report says cause illegal alien apprehensions by southwest 
border sector shows to be skyrocketing, skyrocketing.
  It is incredible the number of people that are now flooding into the 
United States because they have heard nobody is following their oath 
with this administration. They are not enforcing the law. They have 
become like our country, basically. They are ignoring the law. It is 
great. Come on now.
  Here's a sitrep report from 9 June, 1600 hours, regarding 
unaccompanied children, the UC influx. It reports, Mr. Speaker, for the 
entire month of May, there were 5,595 children screened by the Border 
Patrol, but just in the first 8 days of June, there had been 6,956 
children screened by the Border Patrol. As I understand it, May was far 
bigger than April, and April was bigger than March.
  I mean, this is increasing because the administration has not gotten 
serious about abiding by its oath, by not providing a common defense, 
not enforcing our borders, not enforcing our immigration laws.
  A Nation that refuses to enforce such important laws is going to find 
that, when it gets around to deciding the Nation is at risk, it will 
find that it is quite possibly too late.
  Instead of being concerned about following an oath, enforcing 
immigration laws, making sure that people have filled out the proper 
documents, gotten a visa legally--properly--coming in the proper way, 
we had many officials who were brought in, made aware of this Bergdahl 
swap, except for the people the law required to be told--yes, the 
Members of Congress--the lawlessness goes on. We have got to stand up 
and say enough is enough.
  This is an article under U.S. news titled, ``Officials Predicted 
Detainees in Bowe Bergdahl Swap Would Rejoin Taliban,'' from Julian 
Barnes, dated June 10, from Washington.

       Before the U.S. transferred five Afghan Taliban detainees 
     to secure the freedom of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, American 
     intelligence officials predicted that two of the men would 
     return to senior positions with the militant group, according 
     to U.S. officials.
       The classified assessment, a consensus of spy agencies 
     compiled during the prisoner-swap deliberations, said two 
     others of the five were likely to assume active roles within 
     the Taliban, while only one of the five released detainees 
     was considered likely to end active participation in the 
     group's effort to undermine the elected government of 
     Afghanistan.

  Make no mistake--it is not here in this article--but these people do 
not just believe in being hostile to the Government of Afghanistan. 
They consider the United States the Great Satan.
  While this is going on and we are releasing terrorists, who will 
ultimately kill Americans--and mark my words, there will be Americans 
who die unnecessarily because of the release of these murderous thugs.
  For anyone who says, well, you know, they didn't technically stab 
anybody or actually cut off their heads--they believe, they are 
complicit, they support, they assist, and under every State's law, I am 
aware of--and every Federal law--that makes them a principal. That 
makes them guilty of the crime, itself.
  I would think, under the logic of those who say, well, we don't think 
they actually murdered somebody, themselves--well, under that scenario, 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's admission that he planned 9/11/2001 and that 
he glorifies Allah if he has terrorized Americans, he is not really a 
murderer because he didn't actually fly the plane in that killed them 
himself. He just planned it and made sure that it was carried out. That 
is some pretty weak reasoning.
  This is going to cost American lives, letting these five Taliban go.
  There was a bill that my friend from California, Dana Rohrabacher, 
filed--some of us signed onto--that would have prevented the executive 
branch from taking any action to release four of these five that were 
released. That is how serious we took it, but the administration seems 
to think: hey, it was a good deal, we made a good deal.
  Well, it wasn't a good deal. You can't release people who have 
engaged in evil this serious, who have not recanted their evil, who 
want to go back and commit atrocities against nonradical Islamists--
whether moderate Muslims, but especially Christians and Jews--and not 
expect that to come back on you and hurt you.
  This is an article from FOX News, published June 11, today, ``Hagel 
admits administration mishandled aspects of Taliban swap.'' You think?

       Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrives on Capitol Hill in 
     Washington, Wednesday, June 11, 2014, to testify before the 
     House Armed Services Committee.
       Defense Secretary Hagel, on Wednesday, sought to ease 
     concerns about the controversial swap of five hardened 
     Taliban leaders for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, but under 
     pressure from lawmakers, acknowledged that the administration 
     mishandled the announcement.
       ``We didn't handle some of this right,'' Hagel admitted to 
     the House Armed Services Committee, toward the end of the 
     first public hearing on the prisoner exchange.
       The hearing lasted more than 5 hours, as lawmakers from 
     both sides of the aisle voiced concerns about the trade--
     while some also accused Republicans of exaggerating the 
     security threats.

  It is unfortunate that names aren't mentioned as to who said 
Republicans were exaggerating the security threats because, Mr. 
Speaker, when Americans are killed because of this ill-advised swap, we 
need to be able to come back to the floor and say: these are the people 
that thought it was exaggerated to say that releasing murderous, evil 
thugs who hate America was not going to come back to bite us and cost 
American lives.
  This other article, all of this going on at the same time, ``U.S. 
Watches As Iraq Speeds Toward Disaster.''

       Fighters for the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and 
     Syria took Mosul today, giving the militant group control of 
     Iraq's second largest city and setting the country on a path 
     toward chaos.
       ISIS militants already control Fallujah, a city that 
     American Marines took in 2004 in what was the bloodiest 
     battle of the Iraq

[[Page 9979]]

     war. Now, with both Mosul and Fallujah under their control, 
     nearly half of Iraq is in the grips of a group that is a 
     formal affiliate of a terrorist group.
       Equally troubling are the circumstances under which the 
     city fell. Iraqi security personnel simply abandoned their 
     posts, according to reports.

  It sounded like the Bush administration had teed up a security forces 
agreement--sometimes called SFA--with Iraq, could have gone ahead and 
signed it, but thought--because this is the way George W. Bush thinks--
even though he is a Republican and a Democrat was coming in, like his 
father, he feels like: I will do something nice. I will leave this teed 
up. He can come in, sign it, get a lot of credit. It will help him 
start off a good Presidency.
  Well, guess what, it didn't work out. It turns out Bush should have 
gone ahead and signed the agreement. Because of the mishandling by this 
administration, now all of those precious American lives and the blood 
that was shed at Mosul and Fallujah now has radical Islamists back 
standing on those spots where the blood was shed.
  It is time for what in east Texas is called common sense and here in 
Washington is just sense because it isn't common. It is time for us to 
listen to the American people, to read the law and follow it, to keep 
our oaths to the American people because a failure to be vigilant costs 
liberty.
  I still think, Mr. Speaker, because to whom much is given--which is 
the United States, given more than any nation in history--of them, much 
is required.
  As we allow lawlessness to continue on our borders here in Washington 
without encouraging law-abiding, decent activity in places where evil 
radical Islam is reigning supreme, we will be held accountable. This 
country will suffer for its negligent and intentional neglect in 
following the law that has made us so great.
  To those who want to descend to Third World status, this is how you 
do it: you just stop following your own laws, you start ruling by how 
you feel about things, instead of what the law says.
  We have an oath to do better. We have an obligation to the past 
generations who have sacrificed the last full measure of devotion, as 
Lincoln said, and our failure will cause future generations to rise up 
and curse our names if we don't start forcing people to follow the law.
  Mr. Speaker, tonight, I yield back the balance of my time with a 
broken heart.

                          ____________________