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




                     CRISIS AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Tennessee (Mrs. Black) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, our crisis at the southern border is a 
direct result of the President's executive actions that have sent a 
message to children and families across Central America that if they 
cross our porous border they will be allowed to stay. In fact, the 
administration estimates approximately 65,000 unaccompanied alien 
children will cross our border this year alone.
  This is a humanitarian crisis of this administration's own creation 
and a stark reminder of the President's failings when it comes to 
securing our border. An unsecure border presents many dangers to our 
national security, and the recent and dramatic rise in unaccompanied 
alien children along our southern border indicates an alarming ease at 
which our border is being crossed illegally.
  Potentially worse than that, despite the administration's apparent 
surprise by this recent surge in border crossings by these children, on 
January 19 of this year, the Department of Homeland Security posted a 
request for information on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site 
seeking contractors to provide ``escort services'' for Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement. The posting specifically calls for a contractor 
who can transport unaccompanied alien children that have been 
apprehended by law enforcement in the U.S. to the care of the 
Department of Health and Human Services.
  The solicitation from January states that ``there will be 
approximately 65,000 unaccompanied alien children in total.''

                              {time}  1215

  The online posting suggests that DHS was expecting a significant 
increase in the number of unaccompanied alien children that it would 
need to transport this year.
  Furthermore, the 65,000 number closely corresponds with the 
administration's new estimate that 60,000 unaccompanied children will 
come into the country illegally this year.
  This leads to the obvious question of how it was that ICE or DHS was 
able to project such a rise in border crossing by children this year.
  Because of this, I have sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson 
and Acting Director of ICE, Thomas Winkowski, demanding information as 
to how their agencies may have anticipated the recent and dramatic rise 
in the number of unaccompanied alien children that are crossing the 
southern border into the United States illegally.
  Mr. Speaker, this unprecedented humanitarian crisis at our border 
must be resolved, and I fear that promises of even more unilateral 
executive actions from this President will only make the problem he has 
created even worse.
  We must get to the bottom of how this crisis happened, how it can be 
prevented from happening again, and how we can finally secure our 
Nation's problem of securing our porous borders.

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