[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11334-11335]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          CRISIS AT THE BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, according to a Federal judge in Texas, 
our government is ``completing the criminal mission'' of human 
traffickers ``who are violating the border security of the United 
States'' and assisting a ``criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal 
goals.''
  Here is how ICE is complicit in aiding and abetting human smuggling:
  A smuggler is paid to bring children into the United States. The 
smuggler then is apprehended by ICE and prosecuted, but the criminal 
act is completed when ICE personally delivers the migrant child to the 
parent who has instigated the crime. If the parent is also illegally in 
the United States, ICE neither deports the parent nor the child.
  The Federal judge chastised the Department of Homeland Security for 
not enforcing the law and compares this nonenforcement on the border to 
``taking illegal drugs or weapons it has seized from smugglers and 
delivering them to the criminals who solicited their illegal 
importation'' into the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, this administration, with its policy of open borders and 
blatant refusal to enforce the law, is complicit in the crisis at the 
southern border.
  The timing is not a coincidence. The surge of foreign nationals 
illegally entering the United States all began when the President 
planted the seed for executive amnesty in a 2012 Rose Garden speech. In 
this speech, he announced his policy of unilateral administrative 
amnesty for minors. This was an avoidable crisis created to set the 
stage politically for universal amnesty.
  The President's policy of nonenforcement has effectively encouraged 
tens of thousands of people to pay smugglers to bring children from 
Central America to the United States. Now migrant children just 
surrender themselves at the border and expect the United States to let 
them stay, take care of them, or reunite them with their parents who 
may also illegally be in the U.S.

[[Page 11335]]

  Why? Because the word is out in Central America that America does not 
enforce its laws. The number of unaccompanied minors who are smuggled 
into the U.S. illegally has grown tremendously under this 
administration, as this chart shows, now up to 142,000 a year.
  This is not only a humanitarian crisis, but this crisis is affecting 
our national security, our economy, our health, and our sovereignty. 
Our porous border allows anyone to enter the United States illegally. 
The influx of thousands of migrants comes with a cost to the tune of 
billions of dollars, all left to Americans to pay for.
  The system is overwhelmed. We can't even take care of our veterans. 
Now there have been disturbing reports of diseases originating in 
Central America that have traveled with the migrants coming to our 
country threatening the health of people who are legally here and 
American citizens.
  This is not isolated on the border towns. Unaccompanied minor 
children are being sent all over the country. In fact, I just found out 
last night that Health and Human Services is looking for a school to 
house unaccompanied minors in Houston, Texas--my hometown.
  While the administration acts surprised about the crisis, the paper 
trail shows they knew that it was coming in January. The Department of 
Homeland Security in January posted online advertising for 
transportation contractors needed to help deal with this surge of 
unaccompanied minors coming into the United States.
  The administration knew about this, but rather than enforce the rule 
of law and increase border security, the administration planned to 
accept the migrants and find places to house them. This current chaos 
is also an insult to people who come to America the legal way, but the 
White House has put politics over the law and what is best for the 
American people.
  So what now? Well, deploy the National Guard to the southern border 
to deter future migrants from making the journey to America. It is the 
first duty of the Federal Government to defend the sovereignty of our 
Nation. Appropriate money that is still going for nation-building in 
Iraq to fund the National Guard on our southern border. Surely, 
protecting our border is just as important as securing the border of 
Iraq. If the President won't protect the border, let the State 
Governors do it with the National Guard.
  Second, those who have already come here should be safely reunited 
with their families in their native countries. The law should be 
changed to expedite their removal. Warehousing these children is not a 
compassionate response to this crisis. It will not solve the crisis; it 
will only grow.
  The President of the United States should be the first to say to the 
world: The rule of law will be enforced in the United States. Do not 
try to beat the system. Come to the United States the legal way or not 
at all.
  But the administration is missing in action in this crisis. It is 
true the President is going to Texas this week, but he is going down 
there to raise money for a campaign. He is not going near the border. 
Maybe it is just too dangerous to go to the Texas-Mexico border.
  And that's just the way it is.

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