[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1532-1537]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        U.S.-MEXICO RELATIONSHIP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Tenney). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. O'Rourke) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. O'ROURKE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include 
extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. Madam Speaker, with the President's recent announcement 
that through an executive action he would commit resources and national 
attention and focus on building a wall with our neighbor to the south--
Mexico--and given some of the rhetoric that we have heard over the last 
year in the Presidential campaigns about rapists and criminals coming 
from the country of Mexico, one might be confused, at best, or, at 
worst, believe that we have some kind of crisis on our border with 
Mexico, some kind of crisis in

[[Page 1533]]

our relationship with our closest neighbor, a country that has done 
more to benefit the United States than any other country I can imagine, 
a country that is the number one trading partner of the State of Texas, 
the third largest trading partner of the United States, our partner on 
security, on economic development and growth, and on other important 
hemispheric issues.
  It is important today that we take this opportunity to ensure that 
our colleagues in the House have the facts. And it is with those facts 
that we can make better decisions, informed judgments, and a policy 
that is truly going to benefit not just the U.S.-Mexico border, not 
just border States like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, but 
the entire United States. Here are some facts that I would like to 
start with, and then I want to ensure that some of my colleagues who 
can bring their wisdom and experience and perspective to this are able 
to do so.
  The first fact that we should know is that we have record low levels 
of northbound migration from Mexico. In fact, more Mexican nationals 
today are going south into Mexico than are coming north into the United 
States. We have less than zero migration from Mexico. Total northbound 
apprehensions of any people from any country coming across our southern 
border are also at historic lows. And if there are any surges in people 
or populations coming across that border, it happens to be young 
children and families fleeing horrific, historic violence in the 
northern triangle of Central America. And those little kids, they are 
not trying to evade detection, they are not trying to climb fences, 
they are not trying to escape the Border Patrol. They are, in fact, 
turning themselves in, and presenting themselves to Border Patrol 
agents and to Customs and Border Protection officers at our ports of 
entry.
  We should also note that we are expending record amounts of U.S. 
taxpayer resources to secure the border--$19 billion a year this year, 
last year, and the years going forward--only to increase with these 
executive orders. We have more than doubled the size of the Border 
Patrol in these last 15 years from just a little under 10,000 agents to 
over 20,000 agents on the U.S.-Mexico border and some on the U.S.-
Canada border.
  There has never been a terrorist, a terrorist organization, a 
terrorist plot, or a terrorist act connected to our border with Mexico. 
There has been with our northern border with Canada. There has been 
connected to our international airports. There have been homegrown 
radical terrorists. There has never been a case of terrorism connected 
with our border with Mexico.
  But just in case, and we should remain vigilant, just in case, we 
have got those 20,000 Border Patrol agents, we have got thousands of 
Customs and Border Protection officers, we have 600 miles of fencing 
and physical obstructions already on our border with Mexico, we have 
aerostat blimps, we have drones flying overhead, we have a 
concentration of Federal law enforcement--DEA, FBI, among others--
including one of the largest military installations anywhere in the 
world--Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, with 32,000 Active Duty 
servicemembers. We have the security resources already that we need.
  I also think it is important to mention that El Paso, Texas, which is 
conjoined with Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and forms what I think is the 
largest true binational community in the world, certainly the largest 
on the U.S.-Mexico border, El Paso, Texas, is not just the safest city 
on the U.S.-Mexico border, it is not just the safest city in the State 
of Texas, it is the safest city in the United States. And it is not an 
outlier. If you look at other U.S. border cities, like San Diego, 
California, you will find that they are among the safest in the United 
States. In fact, there is a positive correlation with the number of 
migrants and immigrants, documented and otherwise, in a community and 
that community's relative safety. The U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico 
border is far safer than the average American city deeper into the 
interior. These are some of the facts that we need to have at our 
command as we are developing policy, as we are judging the President's 
recent executive actions, and as we are thinking about how best to 
secure this country.
  Here is another fact that we need to keep in mind. If we are 
committing resources where they are not needed, where, for example, we 
don't have terrorism, where we don't have a problem with immigration, 
where we don't have an issue with security, then by definition we are 
taking those resources from where they could be best used, where we 
have known risks and threats, where we have real problems against which 
we must contend, where we are not keeping Americans as safe as they 
could be because we are directing resources where they don't need to 
be, this is something that we need to know, I think, as we make policy 
for this country, as we fulfill our most important solemn obligation, 
which is the safety and security of this country and every American 
within it.
  Madam Speaker, I am very fortunate today to be joined by some 
outstanding colleagues. One whom I would like to introduce from the 
great State of New York is a new colleague, he himself an immigrant to 
this country. He represents tens of thousands of immigrants in his 
Congressional District, has already, from day one, become a leader on 
this issue, introducing legislation that provides a more rational, 
humane, smarter approach to some of these issues that have been blown 
out of proportion, politicized, mythologized, and from that steering 
the country in the wrong direction. Here is somebody who wants to get 
us back on track.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Espaillat).

                              {time}  1715

  Mr. ESPAILLAT. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Madam Speaker, back in 1987, then-President Ronald Reagan issued one 
of his most famous speeches--``tear down this wall''--as he addressed 
then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to insist that he open the barrier 
dividing East and West Berlin. It was, perhaps, one of the most 
exciting times as we watched to see, finally, if the Cold War would 
end. It was a moment of hope and strength and character that propelled 
our country to a higher regard and standard of our identity throughout 
the global community.
  Today, in stark contrast to that famous speech given by President 
Ronald Reagan, President Trump orders the construction of a $25 billion 
wall that divides communities, separates families, and perpetuates fear 
and hate. It sets a dangerous precedent and fails to elevate our 
country and confidence abroad the way it was back when President Reagan 
gave that famous speech. The economic ramifications will be devastating 
to the entire country, going as far north as New York City, because it 
is $25 billion or more that will be spent on building this wall that 
could otherwise go to other meritorious projects.
  These executive actions also secure what I call insecure communities, 
not Secure Communities--a program that strains relationships between 
law enforcement and communities along the border and throughout that 
region of our country.
  We live in a global society and are connected with countries and 
citizens from around the world. To build this wall not only separates 
the United States from our bordering country--our neighbor, Mexico, 
which is one of our biggest trading partners--but the wall itself sends 
a strong message to citizens around the world that they are not welcome 
here in America. The President's wall and his anti-immigrant agenda is 
a continuation of the irrational and hateful rhetoric we have witnessed 
from him before, and it stands contrary to who we are as Americans and 
to what we believe as a nation.
  I am proud to introduce one of my first bills in Congress, called 
This is Our Land, which is legislation that will prohibit this divisive 
wall from being erected on public lands. This is a time when we should 
be investing in our infrastructure--in roads, bridges, tunnels, 
airports, schools, housing--and

[[Page 1534]]

also respecting our public lands. Building President Trump's wall would 
trample on our public lands and potentially put precious endangered 
species at risk and likely disrupt or destroy environmentally important 
ecosystems and habitats. It would also deplete precious resources from 
our cities. We should be building a wall around Trump to stop these 
irrational executive orders--instead of this ludicrous $25 billion wall 
between our closest ally.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. I thank the gentleman from New York for his comments--
again, bringing his experience to bear and, right from the beginning, 
introducing legislation, not just criticizing or complaining, but 
offering an alternative. It reminds us that, if we are to spend $20 
billion on building something in this country--which is the upward cost 
of what President Trump's proposal would take from the American 
taxpayer--there are roads; there are bridges; there are tunnels. There 
are legitimate infrastructure needs on which we could spend that money 
that would put people to work, and it would be money much better spent.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Peters), 
someone who represents a part of the border that really demonstrates 
what is beautiful about the United States-Mexico relationship in San 
Diego and Tijuana. He is a fierce advocate for our shared economic 
development and growth, for the jobs that are connected to that, and 
for everything that is beautiful about the U.S.-Mexico border.
  Mr. PETERS. I thank Mr. O'Rourke for putting together this Special 
Order to talk about what is really an important issue and, with all of 
the things going on, something that has even got a little bit lost.
  Madam Speaker, for the region that I represent in San Diego, the 
border is an economic engine--it is a job creator. Home to the Otay 
Mesa, San Ysidro, and Tecate ports of entry, San Diego-Baja is the 
busiest border crossing in the world. From life sciences to 
electronics, San Diego is an attractive place to start a business and 
to manufacture goods, in part, because of our proximity to border 
crossings and international trade.
  Last month, Mr. O'Rourke and other members of the Congressional 
Border Caucus and I held a hearing with local leaders from chambers of 
commerce from around our districts to discuss real pragmatic solutions 
and issues around the border. I was joined by Jerry Sanders, who San 
Diegans well know as the former mayor. He is also the former police 
chief of San Diego and is now the current president of the San Diego 
Regional Chamber of Commerce. During that hearing, Mayor Sanders said 
that an efficient border is a safe border, and he knows something about 
safety from his time as a police chief. We also know that 99 percent of 
what gets screened at border crossings is safe and that there is no 
need to worry about its coming into the country. What we need is to get 
more efficient at approving the 99 percent of safe cargo and travelers 
and better at stopping the 1 percent that we don't want to come in.
  One of the big challenges that we faced when I first came to Congress 
was in border delays. We saw that delays at the border crossing were 
costing us, at that point, $7.2 billion of economic activity in our 
county and 35,000 jobs annually--numbers so big that they are almost 
unbelievable, but those numbers came from independent assessments.
  One of the great successes I have had in Congress, in working with my 
colleagues within our congressional delegation, is to have worked 
together to secure more than $500 million to finish the expansion and 
the improvements at the San Ysidro border crossing. We did that in 
working with Democrats Juan Vargas and Susan Davis and with Republicans 
Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa because we all understood how important 
the United States-Mexico border is to our regional economy.
  By investing in infrastructure and innovation in San Diego, Tijuana, 
and across the border, we are keeping Americans safe and supporting the 
export of goods made in America by American workers. In San Diego and 
in other communities, we are embracing this forward-looking approach of 
opportunity and job creation.
  Now President Trump wants to put us in reverse by building a wall, 
which we have assessed at $15 billion. I mean, I have heard estimates 
of its being from $18 billion to $20 billion. By any count, it is a 
waste of money. Let's say, for purposes of argument, it is $15 billion. 
It took Congress more than a year to approve $170 million to help 
Flint, Michigan, recover from a crisis that has poisoned children and 
left an entire city without clean water--$170 million compared to $15 
billion for a wall that nobody needs. We are talking about spending 100 
times the money for Flint to build a wall that will do nothing to make 
us more secure, to make our children safer, or to make us more 
prosperous.
  $15 billion is exactly how much the American Society of Civil 
Engineers says we will need to fill the funding gap for infrastructure 
needs at all of our Nation's ports for the next decade. So, if you took 
the money you were going to spend on this wall, you could cover all of 
the investment we would need at our ports around the country for the 
next decade. We are going to spend it on a wall.
  $15 billion is also three times as much money as the Federal 
Government spends to help the homeless every year. For the cost of this 
wall, we could build the Navy the 11th aircraft carrier that it needs. 
For 60 times less--or 1-60th--we could finish the modernization of the 
Otay Mesa border crossing, which is the third busiest commercial port 
of entry along our southern border and which facilitates $35 billion in 
trade every year.
  What are we doing here?
  Unlike President Trump's wall, this investment will support long-term 
job creation and increase revenues and is a much more responsible way 
to spend American taxpayer dollars. Let's be clear. American taxpayers 
are going to foot the bill for this wall, not Mexico. It is the leader 
of the Senate and Speaker Ryan who have committed they are going to 
spend $15 billion on this wall. That is American taxpayers. That is not 
Mexico.
  Instead of trying to turn his campaign rhetoric into policy, we would 
prefer that President Trump listen to those who understand what 
business is like at the border, to those who understand that border 
cities are safe, like El Paso, like San Diego, and that the border is 
an opportunity for America, not a threat. We don't need a wall. We need 
to hire more Customs officers. We need newer screening technologies. We 
need to modernize and expand our infrastructure at other border 
crossings like we are already doing at San Ysidro. That is how you 
would create jobs in America. That is how you would keep us safe.
  I thank my friend Beto O'Rourke for his leadership and for his 
hosting this conversation today. I look forward to working with the 
gentleman in diverting this money from this silly proposal--this 
dangerous proposal--to the kinds of things and investments that our 
country needs from Texas to California.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. I thank the gentleman from California for sharing his 
community's perspective and for reminding us that, when it comes to 
Mexico and our shared connection with Mexico--the U.S.-Mexico border--
we have much more to look forward to than we do to fear.
  In fact, in the State of California, there are hundreds of thousands 
of jobs that depend on U.S.-Mexico trade. In the State of Texas, it is 
just under a half a million. In fact, every single State in the Union, 
including Alaska, has tens--if not hundreds--of thousands of jobs that 
depend on the flow of U.S.-Mexico trade, which happens at our ports of 
entry and comes through at our border. There are 6 million jobs in this 
country, which represent hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries 
and economic growth and add-on effects, that are dependent on U.S.-
Mexico trade. When we begin to prioritize our separation, in sealing 
Mexico off from the United States literally physically, we deprioritize 
those connections that make us stronger, that grow

[[Page 1535]]

our economy, and that create more jobs in the United States.
  One thing that we should know, as long as we are talking about 
sharing facts and confronting some of these unfortunate, untrue myths 
about the border, is that, when we export to Mexico, of course, we 
win--we are building things in our factories; we are sending them to 
Mexico; the Mexican consumer buys them; those dollars are flowing back 
to the U.S. worker. It also happens that, when we import from Mexico, 
we win as 40 cents of every dollar of value that we import from Mexico 
originates in the United States. Literally, factory floor jobs in Ohio, 
in Iowa, in Michigan are producing things that go to Mexico and that 
are part of the final assembly that is reimported to the United States.
  We certainly make things in America today, but we make a lot of 
things in the United States and in Mexico concurrently. Our economies, 
our production platform--our future--is inextricably connected, and to 
try to break that apart is not simply going to hurt Mexico. It is going 
to hurt the United States. It is going to hurt the U.S. worker. It is 
going to hurt our economy. It is going to hurt our opportunity at 
growth.
  If we continue to cast Mexico as the enemy, if we threaten trade wars 
or to pull out of free trade agreements, if we construct a wall to try 
to humiliate that country at a time that it poses no security threat to 
the United States, the consequences are not going to be good. You may 
remember that I reminded you that migration from Mexico over the last 4 
years is less than zero. More Mexicans are going south than are coming 
north to the United States. If you build a wall, withdraw from our 
trade agreements, try to de-link our economies, where you do not have a 
security or an economic problem today, you will in the future have one. 
You will give people in Mexico a reason to flee that country and to 
seek opportunity and jobs and connections and safety and shelter 
somewhere else, and that somewhere else, in many cases, is, in fact, 
going to be the United States.
  If we want to make this country safer, if we want to make this 
country more prosperous, if we want to protect the American worker, 
then the policies that this President has adopted in the first 10 days 
in office are precisely the wrong way to go about doing it. They will 
make us less secure; they will slow down this country's economy; they 
will jeopardize the 6 million jobs that depend on U.S.-Mexico trade.
  If the U.S.-Mexico border is as secure as it has ever been--look at 
any metric, and you will see that I am right--if we are having record 
low levels of northbound migration and apprehensions, if we are 
spending record amounts, if we are using new technologies, like drones, 
to patrol the border, if we have 20,000 Border Patrol agents, which is 
also a record high, why is there so much concern, why is there so much 
interest, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much fear built 
up around the border?

                              {time}  1730

  I will tell you, this is a long time in coming. And when we say that 
there are real issues with where these border measures are coming from, 
let me give you an example of some of those.
  One of our colleagues, when describing young Mexican immigrants 
coming to this country, said: Look at them. They have calves the size 
of cantaloupes. They are bringing drugs into this country.
  When you have a Presidential candidate dismiss Mexican immigrants as 
rapists and criminals, despite the fact that immigrants commit crimes 
in this country at a much lower level than native-born U.S. citizens, 
when you have this kind of rhetoric, when you have this kind of 
mischaracterization, when you have this kind of vilification of an 
entire people and their connection to us at the U.S.-Mexico border, 
then you be the judge of where these priorities are coming from and 
what they are about and why they in no way reflect the real concerns, 
threats, and issues that we have in this country today.
  My colleagues, the fact of the matter is Mexico presents opportunity 
to the United States and it always has. Whether it is the $90 billion 
in U.S.-Mexico trade that passed through just the points of entry in El 
Paso, the city I have the honor of serving in Congress, and Ciudad 
Juarez, the city with which it is connected, whether it is the 6 
million jobs that we already have in the United States economy, whether 
it is our security cooperation to ensure that we are disrupting 
transnational criminal organizations that are trying to move drugs and 
human chattel into this country, whether it is our work to address the 
real security issues in the northern triangle countries of Central 
America that border Mexico, we will lose a very valuable partner. We 
will lose those things that we want most: job growth, economic 
development, security for the people that we represent.
  When we begin to humiliate that country and its leadership--and 
President Pena Nieto has canceled a trip to visit the United States in 
just 1 week of this administration--nothing good will follow that.
  We cannot wall Mexico off from the United States. We cannot wish them 
to disappear. They will always be there, and they should always be 
there. And we should be grateful that they will always be there because 
they have always been a part of our history, our success, those things 
that are best about the United States; and, God willing, they will 
always be part of our future.
  I think it is going to take each and every one of us--every 
Republican, every Democrat, every person who doesn't feel affiliation 
to a party--to stand together behind and with the facts, with the 
truth, with this country's best interests in mind. I am confident that 
if we do that, if we will simply look at what is happening today, what 
has happened historically with that country, where our interests lie, 
we will make better policy. We will not be constructing walls between 
the two countries.
  We will, at some point--hopefully, sooner rather than later--tear 
down the 600 miles of fencing that already separates us. We will build 
more bridges that connect us, not just for trade, not just for economic 
growth, but for the reasons that the people I represent are so grateful 
for and proud of, the place that they call home, a city that, with 
Ciudad Juarez, forms the largest binational community in the world, 
where last year alone 32 million times people from El Paso and Juarez 
crossed into each other's cities.
  Our families are on both sides of the border. Our business partners 
are on both sides of the border. Students at the University of Texas at 
El Paso, who live in Ciudad Juarez and are Mexican nationals, are 
granted instate tuition because we want to attract the very best and 
the very brightest. And we are going to find them all over the world--
in the United States, certainly, but also in Mexico.
  I want to read to you a comment that a constituent of mine posted on 
our Facebook page this evening when I let my constituents know I would 
be on the floor talking about the border, asking them to share the 
truth and the reality, their perspective versus the myth that we hear 
so often here in Congress, on national TV, and from those who don't 
live on or understand the border.
  Lisa Esparza said:

       The border has been great because I grew up in Ciudad 
     Juarez. I came to El Paso, paid for an education at a private 
     school, learned English. I love the fact that I am 
     binational, and I can think and speak in two languages.

  Lisa and millions of fronteriza and fronterizo border residents 
exemplify the best of this country, literally, of what makes America 
great.
  El Paso, for those of you who do not know, has, for more than a 
century, served as the Ellis Island of the Western Hemisphere. If you 
came up from Mexico or your family did--or El Salvador or Guatemala or 
Honduras or Costa Rica or Argentina--there is a good chance that you 
came through the ports of entry in El Paso, Texas; that your family may 
have, before they went on to a destination further in the United 
States, settled in Segundo Barrio or in Chihuahuita. This is a 
community where they learned our laws, our values, where they learned 
to

[[Page 1536]]

speak English, where they went to school, where they not just 
participated and believed in the American Dream, but became net 
contributors to it. It is one of the reasons that El Paso, Texas, is 
the safest city in the United States.
  It is the safest city not in spite of the large number of immigrants 
who live in my community--and, by official counts, 24 percent of the 
people that I represent were born in another country. It is not in 
spite of those people who were born in another country that El Paso is 
so safe. It is, in large part, because of their presence.
  Families made extraordinarily difficult decisions to leave their home 
country--their home city, their families, the language they knew, the 
customs that they loved--to come to a new country. They make sure that 
they follow our laws. They make sure that their kids follow our laws. 
They make sure that their kids are doing the right thing by this 
country so that they can get ahead, have an opportunity and a crack at 
the American Dream. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, there is 
something profoundly great about that. It is what has helped make El 
Paso the safest city, a wonderful city in America, a great country.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Michelle Lujan 
Grisham), someone else who understands the value of our relationship 
with Mexico, the special character of border people, and the value of 
immigration and immigrants.
  Ms. MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, the people 
who, in fact, know the border issues the best--whether it is companies 
or lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, border communities, trade 
groups, economists, and law enforcement officials--all agree that 
building a wall is unnecessary, impractical, ineffective, and it is a 
complete waste of time and taxpayer money.
  This wall, in fact, damages New Mexico's economy, and that is without 
taking into account President Trump's idea to now impose a 20 percent 
tax on Mexican imports to pay for it. In the end, we know that it is 
American jobs, American consumers, and American companies that will be 
hurt.
  Given that the United States already maintains approximately 650 
miles of border fence, drones, cameras, motion detectors, thermal 
imaging sensors, ground sensors, and 21,370 Border Patrol agents, the 
wall is completely unnecessary for the stakeholders who are, in fact, 
most impacted. The only person it truly benefits is President Trump by 
furthering his isolationist, divisive, and anti-immigrant agenda.
  I agree that this country should be building, and I agree with my 
colleague from El Paso, Mr. O'Rourke, that there is a wonderful thing, 
an incredible thing about building bridges, building highways, building 
buildings, and refocusing our energy on making sure that everyone has a 
fair shot and that we are looking at those economic values and those 
economic indicators. That is not what we are doing here. We are 
diverting our attention for an unnecessary, huge, colossal mistake that 
hurts the progress that border communities and border States have made.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New Mexico 
(Ms. Michelle Lujan Grisham) for bringing her State's experience and 
perspective to bear on this issue and for being a champion for the best 
in our traditions and our values.
  I would like to build on the gentlewoman's remarks and talk about one 
of the consequences of building walls. I have already made the case 
that the border is as secure as it has ever been. Those who study and 
understand security issues have come to the conclusion that extra miles 
of wall don't deter migrants.
  The lower levels of migration that we have seen to this country have 
a lot more to do with the U.S. economy and its struggling performance 
in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession and throughout that 
road to recovery and, relatively speaking, the performance in other 
countries, including Mexico, that has afforded Mexican nationals more 
opportunity to stay there.
  The border is as secure as it has ever been. We have recently doubled 
the size of the Border Patrol. We are using the latest and greatest 
technology to remain as vigilant as possible, which we should.
  It is also important to know the character and quality of the Border 
Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers who man the 
line, who are at our ports, and who have one of the most difficult, 
dangerous jobs that anyone has in the Federal Government. The 
conditions in which they work, the situations which they must 
anticipate, the constant vigilance that they must maintain, and the 
kind of threats that they have to be aware of--which include drug 
smuggling, which is critically important to stop; which include human 
smuggling, which we must deter and stop; and which includes, even 
though there has never been a terrorist or terrorist act connected to 
the U.S.-Mexican border, includes the possibility that sometime that 
might happen--those men and women are literally on the front line 
protecting this community.
  I would like to see some of the $14 billion to $20 billion proposed 
for the construction of a wall put behind our Border Patrol agents to 
improve their salaries, their working conditions, and the ability for 
them to do their job and to keep us safe.
  I would like to hire more Customs and Border Protection officers, the 
men and women in blue at our ports of entry who facilitate legitimate 
trade and travel at our ports of entry. They are the ones who help to 
keep this economy humming while keeping us safer.
  Madam Speaker, one of the consequences, though, of building walls, 
while it doesn't make us safer and while it uses a lot of resources 
that could be better put toward other more legitimate security 
challenges, it does do one thing that I want all of us to know about. 
It does ensure that migrants coming to this country will unnecessarily 
suffer, and many will die.
  In the same time where we have gone from 1.6 million apprehensions a 
year--that was the year 2000, 1.6 million apprehensions on our southern 
border--to last year, when there were just a little over 400,000, so a 
quarter of the level that we had 15, 16 years ago, in that same time 
that we have had record low levels of migration, we have maintained 
record high levels of migrant deaths. So those few migrants who do try 
to cross in between our ports of entry and do encounter physical 
barriers are going to more remote sections of the border. They are 
dying of thirst. They are dying of exposure. These are otherwise 
preventable deaths.
  So I ask you to think about it this way. Whether you are looking at 
the moral dimension of this--the otherwise preventable deaths, the 
effort to humiliate our closest partner in the country, of Mexico--
whether you look at the economic dimension of this, if you want to 
protect those 6 million jobs that depend on a strong U.S.-Mexico 
connection, whether you look at the security dimension and taking our 
eye off the ball when it comes to real threats, proven threats that we 
have in this country at our international airports, at our northern 
border with Canada or increasingly homegrown radicals in the United 
States radicalized over the internet, if you want to remove resources 
from those real threats, then go ahead and build a wall if it makes you 
feel good. But it is going to make us less safe, it is going to make us 
less economically secure, and it is going to be to our lasting shame. 
It will haunt us, and it will haunt us for generations for anyone who 
supports this or does not stand up and speak against it.
  I would like to leave you with two anecdotes that I think exemplify 
the beauty, the strength, and the safety of the border. The first is a 
story of an event that took place this weekend in El Paso and Ciudad 
Juarez, where we are joined by the Rio Grande River channel. Right now, 
all that water is stored up at the Elephant Butte Reservoir in New 
Mexico. Really, there is just a little trickle in the river channel not 
more than a couple of inches deep.
  Thanks to the Border Network for Human Rights and thanks to the 
Border Patrol who allowed this, they were

[[Page 1537]]

able to organize 300 families from Mexico and El Paso who were allowed 
to meet--one family at a time--in the middle of that river channel, 
both sides clearly identified so there would not be any security or 
immigration issues.

                              {time}  1745

  And those families got to spend a total of 3 minutes together, 
families who, in some cases, had not seen each other for decades. A 
young woman posted on Facebook that she drove down from Oklahoma City 
to see her dad who she had not seen in 10 years.
  You had folks meeting grandchildren they had never seen before, sons 
or daughters-in-law that they had never seen before, weeping, crying, 
laughing, hugging, holding, kissing for 3 minutes.
  That, to me, is absolutely beautiful. That, to me, is family values. 
That, to me, shows you the extent to which people will try to be 
together, to be with each other, to do the things that perhaps you and 
I, as U.S. citizens, take for granted. And that happened in El Paso, 
Texas, thanks to the Border Network for Human Rights, thanks also to 
the men and women in the Border Patrol.
  It didn't compromise our security. It didn't add any new immigrants 
to this country. It was just doing our best under the current 
conditions.
  The other anecdote that I would like to share with you, and which I 
will close on, involves another outstanding organization in the 
community that I have the honor to serve, Annunciation House, led by 
Ruben Garcia, who--when we faced unprecedented numbers of young 
children and young families, young moms in their teens and twenties, 
coming up from Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, which have 
become the deadliest countries, not just in Central America, not just 
in the Western Hemisphere, but in the world, the deadliest countries in 
the world; kids being murdered and raped and sold into slavery.
  Those kids fleeing that horrific brutality and violence, coming up 
the length of Mexico, sometimes riding on top of a train known as la 
bestia, or the beast, to come and present themselves at our border, not 
evade detection, not try and escape, not try to do anything against the 
law; literally, as the law proscribes, presenting themselves at our 
points of entry to a Border Patrol agent, or a Customs and Border 
Protection officer, and asking for help and for shelter, depending on 
the best traditions inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, counting on the 
United States in their moment of need.
  Well, the Border Patrol were outstanding. The agents themselves, out 
of their own pockets often, were buying toys and gifts for these young 
children, taking care of them, having their hearts broken, doing their 
best to serve them. Agents who work for ICE and immigration were doing 
their best as well.
  As that flow of people, the number of people became too many 
temporarily for us to hold and to process, they got in touch with Ruben 
Garcia at Annunciation House, which is a charity operated in El Paso, 
Texas. And Ruben took those asylum seekers, those refugees, and housed 
them, clothed them, fed them, insured they had showers and medication 
and a visit with a doctor, the ability to talk to their families deeper 
in the interior of the United States and, most importantly, especially 
for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, had a full and 
complete understanding of their legal obligations under U.S. law, what 
they were allowed and not allowed to do, what their court expectations 
were, and that they must appear in court, and that their issue must be 
adjudicated, and that they may or may not be able to stay in this 
country.
  Annunciation House, Ruben Garcia, the volunteers who work for him, 
and hundreds of other El Pasoans who contributed did this at not a 
penny's cost to the Federal taxpayer or to our government.
  So $20 billion to build a wall or Annunciation House taking care of 
refugees, asylum seekers, little kids who need our help for free?
  That is the border. That is the best of us. That is the best of this 
country. That is what we need to think about. Those are the folks we 
need to listen to. Those are the facts we need to understand before we 
even contemplate building a wall, separating ourselves from Mexico, 
giving in to the nativist sentiment and instinct that was so proudly on 
display during this Presidential election.
  I think if we look at the facts, if we take the best from the border, 
we are going to get the best policy and the best outcome from the 
United States.
  And after all, isn't that why we were all sent here? Isn't that what 
we are supposed to do when our voters sent us here to do the work of 
the American people?
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________