[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10196-10202]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and privilege to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives and have an opportunity, in this great deliberative 
body, to bring up the subject matters of my choice, and the purpose is 
to inform you and the American people.
  Before I go into the topics that I am prepared to speak of, I yield 
to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus).


            Meaningful Accomplishments of the 115th Congress

  Mr. ROTHFUS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for kindly yielding 
and allowing me to take a few minutes to have a little bit of 
reflection with the American people as we head into the Fourth of July 
weekend.
  Mr. Speaker, despite widespread cynicism from Washington elites and 
those in the media, the 115th Congress and President Trump have taken 
meaningful action over the past 6 months to improve the lives of 
hardworking Americans.
  According to a recent analysis, this Congress has been the most 
productive in the modern era. By June 8, we had passed 158 bills, 
compared to the 60 bills by the 103rd Congress under Bill Clinton, 67 
bills by the 107th Congress under President Bush, and 131 bills by the 
111th Congress under President Obama.
  President Trump has signed 39 bills into law, including 14 bills 
passed under the Congressional Review Act, stopping harmful regulations 
handed down by the previous administration. According to one analysis, 
repealing these rules could save the economy millions of hours of 
paperwork, nearly $4 billion in regulatory costs to the Federal 
agencies, and an astounding $35 billion in regulatory costs for the 
private sector.
  We sent to the President, and he signed, legislation to bring 
accountability to the Veterans Administration. And the House has acted 
to stop ObamaCare's job and freedom-crushing mandates, and acted to put 
a critical safety net program on a sustainable path.
  The House also voted to repeal and replace Washington's Financial 
Control Law, Dodd-Frank, to get capital flowing to our small businesses 
and to improve choices for consumers.
  The past 6 months have been a strong start, and I look forward to the 
House continuing its work to advance important goals of strengthening 
our economy and creating jobs.


                   Celebrating Our Nation's Birthday

  Mr. ROTHFUS. Mr. Speaker, every year at this time, our Nation 
celebrates our birthday. It is the perfect time to reflect on the 
founding of our country and the principles that made our Nation 
exceptional.

                              {time}  1800

  At the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, President 
Kennedy, in his inaugural address, reflected on our founding 
principles.
  JFK said: ``And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our 
forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that 
the rights of man come not from the generosity of the State, but from 
the hand of God.''
  President Kennedy understood the words of our Declaration of 
Independence: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness.''

[[Page 10197]]

  A little more than 100 years before President Kennedy's inauguration, 
our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, defended the Declaration and 
taught all those around him, as well as future generations, how to 
revere and embrace unwaveringly the sacred and transcendent truths 
expressed in this monumental document.
  Lincoln said in 1858: ``Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught 
doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of 
Independence, if you have listened to suggestions which would take away 
from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; 
if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal 
in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me 
entreat you to come back. Think nothing of me, take no thought for the 
political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that 
are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you 
choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles.''
  Today, Mr. Speaker, let us recommit to the principles set forth in 
our Declaration, that all are endowed by your Creator with certain 
unalienable rights, among them the right to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. And let those who have admired the leaders of our 
country who have reasserted these principles, from Lincoln to Kennedy, 
join together and continue to fight for the protection of these God-
given rights, especially the first right, ``the right to life.''
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak. I 
thank the gentleman from Iowa for having extended to me this 
opportunity to share these thoughts with the American people.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his 
presentation in bringing this topic together in a way that he has. And 
in his method of addressing the Declaration of Independence on the 
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I would expound 
on that as well.
  Life is the most paramount. It is a priority right, and our Founding 
Fathers knew what they were doing. They set up life as the first 
priority, liberty as the second priority, and the third priority was 
the pursuit of happiness.
  Mr. Speaker, I will start from the bottom because, of the three, I 
think it deserves the most explanation. That pursuit of happiness is 
often viewed as maybe a fun tailgate party or a bliss of some kind or 
maybe a barbecue outdoors with the family, the things that we love. 
That is the enjoyment of our life.
  The pursuit of happiness, as it was understood by our Founding 
Fathers, came from the Greek word ``eudaimonia.'' And that is spelled, 
E-U-D-A-I-M-O-N-I-A. And under the Greek word ``eudaimonia,'' it means 
developing the whole human being. And it is not just the mental well-
being, but it is developing the intellectual human being, the physical 
human being, the knowledge base that is there, and the spirit within 
us, and our theology and our souls--the whole package of what we are as 
human beings, developing that to the maximum, these God-given gifts, 
developing them for his glorification, and that is the concept of the 
pursuit of happiness that our Founding Fathers understood.
  So the principle is that we have a right to pursue happiness, 
developing our whole human being, which includes the human enjoyment 
that we think of when we say pursuit of happiness.
  But no one in their pursuit of happiness can trample on someone 
else's liberty because liberties are God-given. And the liberties that 
we have cannot be subordinate to the pursuit of happiness, but they are 
subordinate to the life of others because life is the most sacred.
  Human life is sacred in all of its forms. It is the number one 
paramount right. So the protection of human life is the principle and 
is the highest priority in the Declaration of Independence.
  And the liberties that we have--freedom of speech, religion, the 
press, the right to keep and bear arms, a jury of our peers, no double 
jeopardy, the whole list in the Bill of Rights--those are God-given 
liberties, as conceived by our Founding Fathers and enshrined in the 
Bill of Rights, and, of course, in our Constitution.
  The rights that we have cannot be trampled upon or subordinated to 
someone else's pursuit of happiness. Life, liberty, the pursuit of 
happiness, a well-thought-out, prioritized list in our Declaration that 
gives us the inspiration that was the foundation for our Constitution 
and the principles of our lives in America today.
  So I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his explanation of 
this and for giving me an opportunity to flesh this out a little bit in 
the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  But the segue that he has served up to me is this: that our debates 
today here in this Congress on the immigration bills that have now just 
passed the Congress have been focused on the right to life--the right 
to life versus the criminals that took the liberty to take them. They 
have violated the very foundations of our Declaration, and, of course, 
they violated our laws in a number of ways.
  But I think, especially, of the onset of this discussion, and I think 
of Sarah Root. And her legislation that is Sarah's Law was introduced 
by me in this Congress. I have a copy of this bill today. We introduced 
it last year also, but in this Congress, it became H.R. 174, and it 
came about, and then we incorporated it into the broader bill today 
that we call the sanctuary cities legislation, Mr. Speaker.
  Sarah Root had just graduated from Bellevue University in Omaha. Her 
hometown is Modale, Iowa. She had just finished her graduation the day 
before with a perfect 4.0 grade point average, and her major was in 
criminal investigation. She would, today, be investigating criminals if 
it hadn't been for the criminal that killed her the day after she 
graduated.
  And the individual who is responsible here, Eswin Mejia, who ran her 
over, ran into her vehicle on the streets with triple the blood alcohol 
content that is legal. Eswin Mejia was on a first-name basis with at 
least two of his immigration attorneys. When he was taken into custody, 
interestingly, as bad as the accident was, Sarah was rendered 
unrecognizable and she was on life support for a little while while the 
parents were deciding what decision to make.
  And she was also an organ donor. Sarah saved six. And many days I 
wear this bracelet that says, ``Sarah Root saved six.'' And this 
bracelet hangs on the antlers in my man cave. And when I walk down 
there in the morning, I often say a prayer for all of those bracelets 
that are hung on the antlers in my man cave that represent those 
individuals whose lives have been lost at the hands of criminal aliens 
who were unlawfully present in the United States and perpetrated 
violence against generally American citizens but others that are 
generally those that are at least lawfully present in America.
  Sarah Root was one of those victims, a stellar young lady with a 4.0 
grade point average and a fresh diploma from Bellevue University; her 
whole life and a world ahead of her, and run down on the streets.
  Her father came to testify here in the Judiciary Committee in 
Congress, and he said: ``The judge bailed Eswin Mejia, this 
perpetrator, out of jail for less money than it cost to marry my 
daughter, and he was back home in his home country before we could bury 
my daughter.''
  Those were some of the most powerful and moving and memorable words 
that I have heard in my time here in Congress. We think Eswin Mejia 
went back to Honduras, his home country. He had been incarcerated 
before. He had been encountered by law enforcement before, and they 
turned him loose on the streets.
  This happens again and again in America every day, local law 
enforcement picking up people that are unlawfully present in America, 
violating our immigration laws. The law requires that they be placed 
into removal proceedings. That is the law, but they turn them loose 
anyway and turn them out

[[Page 10198]]

on the streets because we have sanctuary cities and sanctuary cities 
policies. Some local jurisdictions that don't have a written policy, 
but they just simply--it is a practice that they have evolved into 
accepting.
  So when I say every one of the Americans who died at the hands of 
someone who is unlawfully present in America, illegal aliens, generally 
speaking, every one of those are a preventable death. If we enforced 
the law, they wouldn't have been in America in the first place to 
commit the crimes they committed against our American citizens, our 
innocent people like Sarah Root, this beautiful young lady with a 
perfect grade point average, the world ahead of her, a happy, joyful 
young lady that, today, would be living, loving, laughing, and learning 
and contributing to our society. But she is in her grave today because 
Eswin Mejia got triple drunk, was unlawfully in the United States, and 
ran her car down and killed her on the streets and absconded for a 
$5,000 bond.
  What we did with Sarah's Law--this is H.R. 174, the original 
language--and I wanted to assure the family of Sarah Root that this 
language is incorporated into the bill we passed today. It is 
incorporated into sanctuary cities legislation that we passed today. 
And what it does is it prohibits the judge from releasing an illegal 
alien on bond if they have been charged with or subject to a homicide 
or a crime where there is serious bodily injury.
  Once this issue came up in Omaha, Nebraska, and the public knew about 
this, we tried to unseat the judge that released this criminal that may 
have done damage again. But the judge that had let him out on $5,000 
had a similar case. The next time, the bond went way up into six or 
even seven figures. So I think he got the message, but the public got 
the message, too.
  And I don't know whether he will be able to hold his seat or not, but 
we have got to bring the right things. We have got to put the fixes in 
place. You would think we would have a judge that would understand 
this, yet, somehow in the political culture of America, we are watching 
criminal aliens be turned loose on the streets over and over again.
  I recall, Mr. Speaker, sitting in on immigration hearings in the 
Judiciary Committee. This is over a number of years now, and I suppose 
there are a couple of people in this Congress that have sat through 
more, not many. The witnesses would be--every week or so we would have 
a hearing and there would be witnesses that would testify about how 
many people died in the Arizona desert trying to sneak into America. 
And that number would be 200 in a year, 250 in a year, maybe the next 
year it went to 300. I remember that number going to 400 or more who 
died in the Arizona desert on the way into trying to sneak into 
America.
  Finally, with this parade of witnesses that were experts on why we 
ought to open the border so they didn't have a difficult time getting 
into America--that is the lunacy that we have heard in the debate today 
over on this side of the floor, from my view, Mr. Speaker.
  I began to ask the witnesses this question: You are an expert on 
immigration and you have come to testify on how many didn't make it 
through the desert. Could you tell me how many Americans died at the 
hands of those who did make it through the desert?
  And I would ask the witnesses--generally four witnesses--and they 
would go down the line: I don't know the answer; I don't know the 
answer; I don't know the answer.
  And that went on for a while.
  And the fourth witness in one of those days was a former INS agent, 
Michael Cutler. And we are just a few years after September 11, 2001, 
when I asked him this question: How many Americans died at the hands of 
those who made it through the desert?
  Which is the phrase to imply how many Americans died at the hands of 
those who were unlawfully present in America.
  And Michael Cutler's answer was: I don't know the answer to that, but 
I can tell you it is in multiples of the victims of September 11.
  Now, think of that. Three thousand Americans were killed that day. 
Multiples of that would be at least 6,000. If he is right--and he is 
confident he is right, and now I am confident he was right--that 
started me thinking.

                              {time}  1815

  So shortly after that, I commissioned a GAO study. That GAO study dug 
down deeply into the records that we had access to.
  It is hard to get this Congress to compare apples to apples, so I 
began to ask the questions: Of the people in the prisons of America, 
what are they in prison for? How many of them are criminal aliens?
  We did a report on that. They sliced and diced it and narrowed it 
down. It never actually became apples to apples, but it did come down 
to this substantial number that has been supported a couple of other 
times in other studies, in one subsequent that I had done in 2011. The 
number is very close to 28 percent of the inmates in our Federal 
penitentiaries are criminal aliens--28 percent.
  So it is reasonable to do a calculation and an extrapolation off of 
this, if 28 percent of these inmates are criminal aliens, what 
percentage of the murders are they committing? What percentage of the 
rapes are they committing? What percentage of the violent crimes are 
they committing? Or are they in jail for just simply violating a law of 
immigration? You will find out very few are in prison for violation of 
immigration law.
  They are the reflection on criminal aliens. They are similar, a very 
similar, if not identical, proportion of the crimes that are committed 
by others.
  So when you put that on there and hit the calculator--I am not going 
to speak those numbers into the Record here, Mr. Speaker, because it is 
shocking and stunning how many Americans have lost their lives at the 
hands of people who shouldn't have been here in the first place--Sarah 
Root included, Kate Steinle included, and many more.
  A few days after Sarah Root was killed, I sent out a tweet that just 
said: Sarah Root would be alive living and loving life if the President 
had not violated his oath and ordered ICE to stand down.
  That is what happened during the 8-year period of time President 
Obama asserted that he had this thing called prosecutorial discretion. 
Now, that is something that is established in law, at least in 
precedent, but it has to be done on an individual basis, and he 
delivered it in a blanket basis. Janet Napolitano delivered the 
document. I questioned her on it in the committee.
  They decided that prosecutorial discretion can be defined. They 
created four categories of people and essentially granted amnesty to 
all of them and turned them loose. They turned criminals loose on the 
streets in America--36,007 of them in one bunch. Some of them were 
murderers out on to the streets of America.
  You can see what happens to the crime in this country. If you are 
importing people from the most violent countries in the world, and when 
they are encountered by law enforcement turning them loose, or if they 
are picked up for a taillight or speeding or getting in a fight or 
shoplifting, whatever the case may be, failure to signal, running a 
stoplight, they are picked up for that.
  When local law enforcement encounters them, they look at their 
identification. They ask them a few questions. It isn't hard to figure 
out whether they are legal or not. Some are good enough liars. But any 
time that law enforcement encounters people unlawfully present in 
America, they are to put them in removal proceedings, and ICE is to do 
it. Yet thousands have been turned loose on the streets.
  At least 300 cities in America have established sanctuary policies 
that they turn them loose. Some of the cities have passed policies that 
refuse to allow their law enforcement to even gather information or 
accept information on illegal aliens that they encounter.
  So, for example, this is how bad it is even in a place like Iowa. One 
of my staff people who was involved in a car accident that was caused 
by an illegal alien who had no license and had no insurance but he did 
have an illegal job

[[Page 10199]]

in the town where he caused the accident crashed into my staff and 
wrecked my staff's car.
  So when I got the phone call on that, I turned to my then-chief of 
staff who is a lights-outs, University of Chicago School of Law lawyer. 
I said: I want you to go to this town and stay there until you can get 
this resolved. And I want to find out: What can we get accomplished to 
enforce the law?
  This was our opportunity to learn if a Member of Congress' staff can 
be run into by an illegal alien without a driver's license and without 
insurance with an illegal job in town and owning a car, and I have a 
topnotch lawyer chief of staff to go up there and communicate with law 
enforcement to try to bring the law enforcement in place so we could at 
least deport the guy.
  After 3 or 4 days up there and a number of phone calls from me down 
here, I finally got the message back that finally convinced me we 
couldn't crack through the code of local law enforcement to be able to 
deport the individual who was clearly illegal. He was unlawfully 
working--no driver's license and no insurance.
  The practice of simply staying out of immigration law because they 
were local law enforcement and didn't want to touch it was so ingrained 
that we could not move the bubble off the center.
  Finally, I said: Okay, we have got other people to take care of. We 
are not going to get this solved, so let's turn our focus back to other 
things.
  That is so very frustrating. I tell this, Mr. Speaker, to let the 
world know the frustration of families who had a loved one who was 
killed by illegals and watched them turned loose on the streets, and 
then have them abscond and go back to their home country or go back 
into the shadows and hide.
  That is the thing that happened with Sarah Root. Today, we did honor 
to her and her life by passing Sarah's Law as part of the sanctuary 
city law. How utterly appropriate to bring a ban on sanctuary cities, 
to pass it off the floor of the House, and wrapped up in the same bill 
is Sarah's Law to respect her; her life; the sacrifice of her life; the 
sacrifice of her mother, Michelle; her father, Scott; and her only 
sibling, her brother, Scotty, who carries the whole load now for the 
next generation--all of that.
  Finally, Congress did some justice for Sarah Root. It is only a small 
piece of justice. It is the least we can do, but it is the right thing 
for us to do. What her family wants is that no other families have to 
suffer like they have suffered.
  This is the story of Sarah Root whose name was elevated on the 
national stage by President Trump. As much as I push things out of this 
Congress, I don't come close to having as big a megaphone as Donald 
Trump. So I want to thank the President of the United States for 
picking up the case of Sarah Root when he came to Iowa to campaign for 
the nomination of the Presidency of the United States.
  When he began to make his immigration cases and lay out the platform 
for his immigration policy, I noticed that it mirrored mine very 
closely. I mentioned to him one day: Mr. President, I have market 
tested your immigration policy for 14 years in Iowa. It shouldn't have 
been a surprise that they understand these issues. They support the 
rule of law, they support securing the border, they support building a 
wall, and they support banning sanctuary cities. That is not just Iowa 
values, that is at least heart of the heartland values.
  Those are American values--American values that want to live in a 
country that has the rule of law, a country where our children can be 
safe, and where they can play in the streets and they don't have to be 
looking over the shoulder; or a mother or a father doesn't have to keep 
them indoors because the streets are too dangerous.
  This morning, we have heard from Jamiel Shaw who has been in to this 
Congress and testified before my committee maybe as far as back as 8 or 
9 years ago. He is from Los Angeles. His son, who was a star football 
player, Jazz Shaw, was shot down and killed by an illegal alien gang 
member who went on the hunt that day with an assignment, as I 
understood it, to go shoot a Black person.
  Jazz Shaw was murdered on the streets close enough to his father, 
Jamiel's, house that his father said this morning on FOX News that he 
could hear the gun shots. He went out there to see his son laying on 
the street in the blood pooling in the street. A ghastly murder for the 
sake of what? A gang challenge and a race label.
  That would not be the case if that murderer had been deported back to 
his country. It would not be the case if he came back in and we picked 
him up a second time.
  Under Kate's Law, the killer of Jamiel Shaw's son would not have been 
in America if we had had Kate's Law and had enforced Kate's Law because 
he had been encountered before and had been deported.
  This is the evil murderer, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. This is the 
beautiful young lady, 32 years old, Kate Steinle, who was down on the 
wharf in San Francisco with her father enjoying a day and was simply 
shot down and killed for no reason and at random by this individual who 
had been five times deported and convicted of something like seven 
different felonies in this country.
  Under Kate's Law, that jacks that penalty up. He would have been 
locked up for a good, long time if that law had been in place, or the 
sanctuary city legislation we passed today outlawing sanctuary cities. 
They would be turning over these kinds of criminals to ICE where they 
would get their just sentence in Federal penitentiary and then be 
deported.
  But even though we have these laws now passed, and if the Senate 
takes them up and passes them into law, the President will sign them. 
We are confident of that. He asked that these bills be brought before 
the House of Representatives as soon as possible. Of course, that was 
today. So if these acts that we passed today become law, then many 
Americans will be saved from the kind of carnage that we have heard 
about in case after case.
  When I saw the story come through of Kate Steinle, I looked at that. 
It was the most tragic story. Here is a clip of what I sent out that 
day. This is July 3, 2015. It is a picture of Kate Steinle. The message 
in the tweet is: A 100 percent preventable crime--dated July 3, as I 
said, 2015--100 percent preventable crime. Just enforce the law. This 
will make you cry, too, and it happens every day. Every day in America, 
there are Americans that die at the hand of illegal aliens.
  I recall the case in Cottonwood, Minnesota, where an illegal alien 
who had been encountered by law enforcement before and turned back on 
the streets of our country who didn't have a driver's license, didn't 
have insurance, and should have been deported at least once and 
probably more times than that ran a school bus off the road in 
southwest Minnesota.
  Four kids in that school bus were killed. Two of them were siblings. 
Three families lost children in that bus accident where the bus was run 
off the road by the illegal criminal alien.
  The dialogue that came from the left--the people that we heard debate 
over here today and voted against every one of these bills--was: this 
doesn't have anything to do with illegal immigration. It has got 
nothing to do with that. It is just the happenstance of life. In every 
society, there are car accidents, there are murders, there are rapes, 
there is assault, there is battery, and there is grand theft.
  Every society has that to some degree, but every single victim of a 
criminal alien that is in deportable category is a preventable crime. I 
have made that case over and over again for years, Mr. Speaker. But I 
made the point. They will say that it was just an accident, it was 
happenstance, and it has nothing to do with immigration.
  My district director looked at me. He is a mild-mannered, soft-
spoken, and judicious kind of a person. He said: If they believe that, 
if they say that, then you say to them: then you go up there to 
Cottonwood, Minnesota, and tell their parents that their children would 
still be dead if we had deported

[[Page 10200]]

the illegal that ran the bus off the road.
  That hits home to me, too, Mr. Speaker. It rings so true. Any family 
that is suffering the loss of a loved one--the Steinle family, the Root 
family, and so many other families, the families in Cottonwood, 
Minnesota, the families in Omaha, and the families around in my 
district--those families know that if he had enforced the law then 
their child or their husband would still be alive.
  So as part of the sanctuary city legislation that we moved through 
here today, and as in Kate's Law just passed--I need to make sure that 
I state that--and in Sarah's, they would both be alive today living, 
loving, laughing, learning, contributing to our society, sharing joy, 
and giving joy.
  There is another case that I have just picked up. A teen charged in 
an Iowa woman's death may have fled the country. Authorities say a 
teenager who was at the wheel of a car that was involved in a crash in 
Omaha last month that killed an Iowa woman--that is Sarah--has missed a 
court hearing and may have fled the country.
  Well, that is a little memo that says: He absconded, we think, to 
Honduras. He may be living in the shadows.
  Here is another story, and that is addressed, Mr. Speaker, by 
legislation that was brought by Andy Biggs of Arizona. I thank him for 
advancing this legislation, also.
  This is the story of Grant Ronnebeck. He was 21 years old. He was 
gunned down in January of 2015, while working at a QuickTrip in Mesa, 
Arizona. The man charged with killing him, Apolinar Altamirano, was 29 
years old, in the country illegally, and had been released by 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement even though he had previously been 
convicted of a felony burglary charge.
  Now, why are we turning people loose in the streets of America to 
walk the streets again when they were deportable before they committed 
the felony burglary charge, convicted of a felony burglary charge, and 
then turn them loose again? Does the judge decide that somehow he has a 
right to be in America? That is a clear deportation requirement.
  I recall when we had John Ashcroft as the Attorney General. He 
testified before the committee that when they released criminal aliens 
on to the streets without bond with a date set for a hearing, 84 
percent of them didn't show up.

                              {time}  1830

  And that was before President Obama sent the message that it didn't 
matter. Those numbers have gone up, not down.
  Here is another one. This was just another ghastly, tragic story that 
happened in Omaha. Louise Sollowin died in July of 2013. Three days 
after the attack in her home, according to Omaha police, an officer 
sent to the south Omaha house Sollowin had lived in for 71 years found 
her body covered in blood in her bedroom about 9 a.m.
  The officer said Sergio Martinez-Perez, 19--I am going to skip some 
of this, because it is too nasty to put into the Congressional Record--
was passed out there, having raped the 93-year-old woman. Authorities 
believed that Martinez-Perez entered the home through an unlocked door. 
He, too, was an illegal alien who had been encountered by law 
enforcement and was released and went out to rape and murder.
  So when the President said that we have people who do these things 
among those who have come from some of those countries, that is clearly 
true. A lot of good people also, but we need to have the rule of law. 
We need to enforce the rule of law.
  And when they are coming from these other countries that have 
corruption but don't have the benefit of the rule of law and the 
respect for the law that we have, they are importing those low 
standards in here.
  We must sustain the rule of law, restore the respect for the rule of 
law. If we do that, we will sustain ourselves as a First World country. 
If we fail to do so, if we lose the rule of law, then we will devolve 
into a Third World country eventually. The core of this from the 
beginning for me, Mr. Speaker, has always been to restore the respect 
for the rule of law.
  Ronald Reagan signed the amnesty act in 1986. I give him credit for 
at least naming it--calling it what it was, an amnesty act. It was a 
reward for law breakers. The cabinet around him encouraged him to sign 
the amnesty act.
  Me, you know, I kicked my filing cabinet the day I heard on the news 
that he had signed it, and I kicked a dent in it because--well, out of 
frustration was why.
  But I believe Ronald Reagan would see with clarity that you can't 
reward law breakers and think that somehow you are going to be able to 
put that behind you and that the law will be enforced and respected 
from that point forward.
  There were to be a million people that received amnesty in 1986. 
Ronald Reagan signed the amnesty act, and it became 3 million people 
because they probably counted a little wrong, and there was a lot of 
fraud, a lot of people who presented themselves and alleged that they 
were to be included. This was a faster track to citizenship for them.
  Three million people received amnesty in 1986, and I said then that 
none of them should have, that they should not be rewarded for breaking 
the law. Yet they got their amnesty.
  The signature that Ronald Reagan put on that amnesty legislation was 
supposed to be in exchange for enforcement of the law, but the law 
didn't get enforced. The amnesty was delivered triple what was 
expected. And I knew then that we would have a long, hard slog 
restoring the respect for the rule of law, but I have set about doing 
that since that period of time.
  More than 30 years later, we are here on the floor strengthening the 
rule of law after all this time, after the amnesty that has been 
advocated by others.
  Each decade we seem to have to have a battle. They want to come with 
what they now call comprehensive immigration reform. Just about anybody 
in America knows if you say ``comprehensive immigration reform,'' you 
really mean amnesty.
  I say to them: Just be honest. If you think amnesty is a good idea, 
why do you say all those three words when you can say ``amnesty'' and 
be honest? People know what you mean. If the public is ready for 
amnesty, then you can pass it. If we are not, you can't.
  The American people understand this intuitively, that we have got to 
stop the law-breaking and that we cannot be rewarding those who break 
the law.
  Now, there are those who think that we should somehow find a path of 
amnesty for those individuals identified unconstitutionally by Barack 
Obama in his DACA program--Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. They 
aren't all innocent little waifs who have been brought in by their 
mother against their will, as many would say. Instead, many of them are 
prime gang-age recruitment, young men.
  I have gone down there and watched that flow of epic humanity coming 
out of Central America, coming through Mexico, some from Mexico--a 
diminishing number from Mexico--coming into the United States. The 
numbers we looked at were 81 percent male. And if they are under 18, 
they are coming on their own--if they are 14, 15, 16 or 17 years old. 
And they don't always tell you the truth either, Mr. Speaker.
  So this large group of people are prime gang-age recruitment youth. 
And these youth are coming from some of the most violent countries in 
the world. And 11 of the 13 most violent countries in the world are 
south of the Rio Grande, and one of those countries is not Mexico. So 
when they come into America, they bring with them the violence and the 
culture that is part of it, and we can expect our crime rates to go up.
  The people from the inner cities, who generally sit over on that side 
of this Congress, want to get them out of places like El Salvador and 
Guatemala and put them into the inner cities, in places like east St. 
Louis and Detroit and Newark, and a number of other cities where the 
violent crime rate is very high, to get them away from the violence 
that is part of their neighborhood. I would submit, Mr. Speaker,

[[Page 10201]]

that we may be putting them into neighborhoods that are more dangerous 
than the countries that they come from, but we don't log those crime 
statistics very clearly because it is so sensitive to the people in the 
inner city, they don't want to talk about it.
  So crime has been pervasive in these countries. They are sending 
young men especially that are prime gang-age recruitment. They are 
being recruited to MS-13. Judge Jeanine Pirro said the other day that 
30 percent of them become MS-13 members.
  Mr. Speaker, let me inquire, if I could, the amount of time I have 
remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 20 minutes remaining.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that response.
  I wanted to roll through what our sanctuary cities legislation does 
that we just passed today, and it goes a pretty good, long, 
comprehensive way.
  I pointed out that I brought the first sanctuary cities legislation 
into this Congress that I could find a record of. It was in 2005 when I 
brought an amendment through the Homeland Security appropriations to 
cut all funding to sanctuary cities. 2005. And then along the way, each 
opportunity that was there, I brought an amendment to cut off funding 
to sanctuary cities. Most of the time it was in the Judiciary, the 
justice appropriations bill. And I see a number of them here scattered 
in my memo that I asked staff to put together.
  So as far back as 12 years ago, I have been working to end Federal 
funding going to sanctuary cities that defy local law enforcement. And 
we have gotten resistance from the other side of the aisle 
consistently. Barack Obama was never going to sign anything like that, 
but I kept beating the drum every year to cut off funding to sanctuary 
cities.
  Finally, I introduced the legislation on sanctuary cities in 2015, 
and then again at the beginning of this Congress. And Chairman Bob 
Goodlatte was gracious enough to pull that together so we could bring 
it to the floor today. And we have had a lot of cooperation from many 
others on this.
  I see the first date I introduced the sanctuary cities legislation as 
a standalone bill was November 4 of 2015, and here we are today finally 
passing it.
  I thought I had been at it for a long time, Mr. Speaker, and it added 
up to 12 years that I have been actively engaged, at least--maybe 14--
until I talked to Congressman Lou Barletta from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, 
who, as a mayor in 1999, began to raise the issue and made it a 
national issue. He was selected to this Congress. He has been at it 18 
years. Others have been at this a long time, too.
  So many of us are grateful today that the sanctuary cities language 
has passed and that Sarah's Law, Kate's Law, all of that that I was 
able to introduce into this Congress has passed out of the House of 
Representatives and messaged to the Senate. And I hope the Senate picks 
it up.
  The sanctuary cities language does this:
  It bans their policies, for starters, Mr. Speaker.
  It blocks the Department of Justice grants to the sanctuary cities 
that defy Federal law and refuse to cooperate with Federal law 
enforcement on immigration. And those grants would be generally grants 
that have to do with law enforcement that would be effected by DOJ.
  It allows the Department of Homeland Security to refuse warrants from 
the sanctuary cities. The sanctuary cities might serve a warrant to 
someone in custody, and DHS can say: We are not going to hand this 
person over to you because we are pretty confident you are just going 
to turn them loose on the streets.
  So that piece in there is a protection that keeps some from being 
released.
  And then it requires ICE to take custody of these criminal aliens 
within 48 hours of the notice that comes from the State or local 
government that would have them picked up.
  It also establishes a good faith provision that holds local 
government harmless for honoring ICE detainers.
  Now, that is something that was undermined on February 25 of 2015 by 
then-Acting Director of ICE, Dan Ragsdale, who sent a letter out that 
just simply advised local law enforcement that an ICE detainer is a 
suggestion, not an order.
  Well, the law and the rule says that it is an order, not a 
suggestion. This statute clarifies it and firms it up with respect to 
detainers.
  And then if a local jurisdiction is sued by, say, the ACLU, as they 
are wont to do, it gives them a protection, and it lets the Department 
of Justice and the Federal Government substitute itself for local 
government, and it holds local government harmless when it comes to the 
case of ICE detainers.
  Here is a very powerful piece, Mr. Speaker, and it is this: the 
sanctuary cities legislation passed today, H.R. 3003, provides a cause 
of action against any jurisdiction that releases an alien who 
subsequently commits a felony.
  Now, that is a powerful provision, and it is something that moves me 
in my heart. As a former crime victim, it occurred to me when they 
announced the name of the case that I wasn't involved in that equation 
at all even though it nearly destroyed my business, and I began to 
think about how this is.
  Our criminal law comes from old England. And in old England, if you 
committed a crime--the king owned everything. If you killed one of his 
serf, you killed the king's serf. That was the murder that took place. 
If you shot a deer, you shot the king's deer. If you stole something, 
it was a violation against the crown.
  And we transferred the criminal law into America, and the State has 
replaced the crown. So when you commit a crime, that crime is committed 
against the State as if you had killed one of the king's deer, but it 
doesn't consider the victim hardly at all. We are doing a little better 
in recent years, but this allows the crime victims to have a recourse, 
Mr. Speaker. And I think we will hear a lot about this provision in the 
sanctuary cities law as this moves over to the Senate.
  I think we made a lot of progress today. It has been a good day to do 
honor to the lives of Sarah Root, a beautiful young lady whose mother 
is here in this Capital City today and speaking and testifying and 
doing radio and meetings.
  And one day I hope we hunt down Eswin Mejia, the killer of this 
beautiful young woman. And one day I hope we have the relationship with 
his home country where they will hunt him down and extradite him to the 
United States of America. That is, of course, a law we need to have in 
a civilized world.
  And Kate Steinle, I thank not only Matt Salmon for bringing this 
forward, but Bill O'Reilly and the President of the United States.
  Something this President has done is he asked the family members of 
the victims of criminal aliens in America to step up on the stage with 
him around the campaign trail over and over again. One would think that 
they were props for a campaign. That kind of criticism flowed out. But 
here is what he has really done: he illuminated the pain that they went 
through over and over again. When he came back to Iowa on a ``thank 
you'' tour, he had some of the crime victims there. He brought them up 
on the stage. You can tell by the look in his eye that they moved him.
  He has said the thing that moved him the most in the entire campaign 
were the families who had an illegal kill their daughter, their son, 
their family member. That moved him the most. He has done honor to 
that.
  He has asked that we bring this legislation to the floor. We have 
done so. We have passed it out of the House.
  And the President, yesterday, met with a dozen or so of these 
families at the White House. He will continue to push this legislation 
till it becomes law. And I expect at the bill signing ceremony, these 
families will be invited back to the White House and they will get a 
closure on the pain that they are going through this day.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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