[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 75 (Wednesday, May 1, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H2784-H2790]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DENOUNCING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION'S IMMIGRATION POLICIES
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1137, I
call up the resolution (H. Res. 1112) denouncing the Biden
administration's immigration policies, and ask for its immediate
consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Yakym). Pursuant to House Resolution
1137, the resolution is considered read.
The text of the resolution is as follows:
H. Res. 1112
Whereas President Joe Biden and Secretary of Homeland
Security Alejandro Mayorkas have created the worst border
security crisis in the Nation's history;
Whereas President Biden, beginning on day one of his
administration, systematically dismantled effective border
security measures and interior immigration enforcement;
Whereas the Biden administration's open-borders policies
have incentivized 9,500,000 illegal aliens from all around
the world, including criminal aliens and suspected
terrorists, to arrive at the southwest border;
Whereas the Biden administration has allowed at least
6,400,000 illegal aliens from the southwest border to travel
to American communities;
Whereas current immigration law allows for the United
States to enter into asylum cooperative agreements with other
countries to allow for the removal of certain aliens seeking
asylum in the United States;
Whereas asylum cooperative agreements provide the United
States with another tool to reduce the incentives for illegal
immigration;
Whereas asylum cooperative agreements increase cooperation
with United States allies in the Western Hemisphere and
around the world and promote shared responsibility;
Whereas the previous administration announced asylum
cooperative agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras;
Whereas the Biden administration suspended and terminated
these asylum cooperative agreements as part of its open-
borders agenda that has encouraged mass illegal immigration
to the southwest border;
Whereas the border wall aids the Border Patrol in its
mission to ``detect and prevent the illegal entry of
individuals into the United States'';
Whereas the Biden administration stopped the previous
administration's southwest border wall construction;
Whereas the Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that
the Secretary of Homeland Security detain inadmissible aliens
arriving at the border who express an intention to apply for
asylum or fear of persecution;
Whereas the Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that
the Secretary of Homeland Security detain, during removal
proceedings, aliens who arrive at the border and are found to
be inadmissible;
[[Page H2785]]
Whereas the Biden administration has purposely violated
United States immigration law by refusing to detain
inadmissible aliens arriving at the border;
Whereas the Biden administration's purposeful violation of
the mandatory detention statutes of the Immigration and
Nationality Act has resulted in the mass release of millions
of illegal aliens into United States communities;
Whereas the Biden administration could expand expedited
removal to more quickly remove illegal aliens at the border
and screen more illegal aliens for asylum eligibility instead
of mass releasing them into the United States;
Whereas, when implemented by the Trump administration, the
Migrant Protection Protocols helped reduce illegal
immigration;
Whereas, despite its effectiveness and despite the advice
of career Department of Homeland Security officials not to do
so, the Biden administration terminated the Migrant
Protection Protocols;
Whereas the Biden administration has purposely violated
United States immigration law by abusing discretionary case-
by-case and other parole authorities to mass parole illegal
aliens who would otherwise have no legal basis to enter and
remain in the United States;
Whereas the Biden administration issued multiple memoranda
limiting circumstances under which immigration enforcement
actions can be taken against illegal aliens;
Whereas these memoranda are the basis for lower numbers of
criminal alien removals from the United States;
Whereas additional criminal aliens remain on American
streets, free to offend and victimize more Americans, because
of the Biden administration's lack of immigration
enforcement;
Whereas these memoranda are the basis for policies
directing Federal Government attorneys in immigration court
to not pursue removal cases against illegal aliens;
Whereas the Biden administration's open-borders policies
signal to illegal aliens that when they come to the United
States they will be released and will not be removed;
Whereas the Biden administration's open-borders policies
encourage illegal aliens to come to the United States and
allow illegal and other criminal aliens to remain in the
country;
Whereas the illegal alien who viciously allegedly murdered
22-year-old Athens, Georgia, nursing student Laken Riley is a
beneficiary of the Biden administration's open-borders
policies;
Whereas, during the State of the Union speech, President
Biden described Laken Riley's illegal alien alleged murderer
as ``an illegal'';
Whereas, two days later, after pressure from open-borders
advocates, President Biden noted in a television interview
that he felt ``regret'' for using the word ``illegal'' to
describe Laken Riley's illegal alien alleged murderer;
Whereas, during that interview, President Biden claimed
that illegal aliens like Laken Riley's alleged murderer
``built the country'';
Whereas Laken Riley's illegal alien alleged murderer should
not have been released by the Biden administration into the
United States;
Whereas Laken Riley's illegal alien alleged murderer should
have been arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement after he committed crimes in the United
States; and
Whereas Laken Riley's illegal alien alleged murderer is but
one of countless illegal alien criminals and terrorists the
Biden administration has released into the United States:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) affirms the Biden administration has taken executive
actions that created the current border crisis, including--
(A) ending the Migrant Protection Protocols;
(B) terminating asylum cooperative agreements with
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador;
(C) abusing parole authority;
(D) stopping the previous administration's southwest border
wall construction;
(E) issuing memoranda limiting immigration enforcement;
(F) removing fewer criminal aliens from the United States;
and
(G) purposely violating statutes that require the detention
of inadmissible aliens;
(2) denounces the Biden administration's open-borders
policies, which allowed Laken Riley's illegal alien alleged
murderer to enter the United States and ensured he would not
be removed until it was too late--if at all;
(3) condemns the public safety crisis caused by the Biden
administration's open-borders policies;
(4) urges the Biden administration to rescind its open-
borders policies; and
(5) implores the Biden administration to implement policies
that end his administration's border crisis.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The resolution shall be debatable for 1
hour, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority
member of the Committee on the Judiciary, or their respective
designees.
The gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock) and the gentleman from
New York (Mr. Nadler) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).
General Leave
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and
include extraneous material on H. Res. 1112.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, in January, the Border Patrol chief in the Del Rio
sector told House Republicans: I am standing in front of an open fire
hydrant with a bucket. I don't need more buckets. I need somebody to
shut off the hydrant.
President Trump did exactly that. His remain in Mexico policy had
slowed illegal immigration to a trickle. The border wall was nearing
completion with only construction gaps remaining to be closed.
ICE was actively enforcing court-ordered deportations, sending a
strong signal around the world that illegal migrants would end up right
back where they started, so they stopped coming.
On Inauguration Day, Mr. Biden reversed all of these successful
policies, the first of more than 60 actions he has subsequently taken
to undermine our immigration laws and open our border to the world.
The result has been the largest illegal mass migration in history.
Since that day, over 4.6 million illegal migrants have been released
into this country deliberately. While the Border Patrol has been
overwhelmed, another 1.8 million known got-aways illegally entered, as
well.
That is a total of 6.4 million illegals added to our population,
larger than the entire State of Missouri, our 18th largest State with
eight congressional districts. That is just in 3 years.
The impact has been devastating. Schools have been overwhelmed as
classrooms are packed with non-English-speaking students. Hospitals
have been forced to shift millions of dollars of care from Americans to
illegals. In Yuma, Americans are very often sent to Tucson for
maternity care because local beds are now taken by illegals.
The social safety net has been shredded by the deliberative admission
of millions of impoverished illegals demanding free food, clothing, and
shelter.
The number of terrorist suspects the Border Patrol has encountered
has ballooned exponentially.
{time} 1230
Law enforcement officials are warning that among the 1.8 million got-
aways, mostly single, military-age men, there is likely a dangerous
fifth column, which could soon launch devastating attacks within our
borders.
Fentanyl brought in through the open border is killing hundreds of
Americans every day. Democrats' sanctuary policies hamstring attempts
to deport criminal illegal aliens. Worst of all, the admission of
untold thousands of the most vicious gang members on the planet are now
producing a terrible butcher's bill of murders and assaults on
Americans.
This resolution speaks for Americans who have had enough, and it
condemns these policies. I am afraid that is really all that we can do
until the American people rise up and demand an administration and a
Congress willing to restore our borders and to put Americans first.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time my time.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, this country is facing real problems. There is an
erosion of trust in our government and institutions.
The right to bodily autonomy is under attack across the Nation. The
State of Maryland needs assistance in rebuilding the Francis Scott Key
Bridge so that the Port of Baltimore, whose economic impact touches
communities across the country, can reopen. Our immigration system
cannot function because Congress has failed to reform it for over 30
years.
[[Page H2786]]
Instead of responding to these problems, House Republicans are
wasting our time, yet again, on another meaningless immigration
resolution.
At Donald Trump's direction, they refuse to work toward solutions for
our broken immigration system, so instead, all they have to offer is a
bunch of empty rhetoric.
This resolution, like the others we have considered in recent months,
will do nothing to solve the situation at the border.
Not a single dollar will go to help our law enforcement agents at the
border as a result of this resolution.
Not a single person will be denied unlawful entry to this country as
a result of this resolution. Not a single community will be made safer
as a result of this resolution.
This resolution is nothing more than a highlight reel of the dubious
talking points of immigration that we have heard over and over from
Republicans since President Biden was sworn into office.
It is the same legislating by press release that we have become
accustomed to in this historically unproductive Congress.
The resolution itself is simply a rehash of the resolution we passed
a few weeks ago. Republicans are so out of ideas that it even has the
same exact title and much of the same content as the last resolution.
That resolution listed all the ways that President Biden supposedly
could secure the border and essentially asks the administration to
reverse every policy it has implemented on immigration, even though we
know that doing so would not be effective.
Today's resolution simply lists most of those policies again, and
this time it just condemns the administration. What a waste of time.
It is important to remember how we got here. Earlier this Congress,
House Republicans passed their partisan, cruel, and unworkable border
bill, H.R. 2.
Republicans spent a year saying that H.R. 2 is the only way to secure
the border, even though they know that it cannot become law, having
failed twice to pass the Senate, receiving just 32 votes earlier this
year.
Then they insisted that the price of helping to protect Ukraine
against Russian aggression was enacting harsh border enforcement
legislation.
Senate Republicans even managed to convince some Democrats to agree
on a very harsh border bill in the Senate, a bill that Minority Leader
McConnell called the toughest border bill in 30 years, but Republicans
could not take ``yes'' for an answer.
Donald Trump said that he didn't want to do anything that might
actually help at the border in an election year because he wants
immigration as a campaign issue. Other Republicans quickly agreed.
Folding to the cult of Donald Trump, Speaker Johnson declared the
bill dead on arrival in the House with the rest of the Republican
Conference quickly falling in line.
Republicans showed clearly what Democrats have been saying over and
over again, that they don't want to do anything that would really help
address our broken immigration system. They clearly have given up.
Instead of solving the problem, Republicans merely want to continue
to weaponize the border as a political issue for the election year with
pointless votes on meaningless resolutions that accomplish nothing and
are full of misleading information.
Let's review the facts once again. The resolution complains that the
Biden administration is not removing enough people.
However, the administration is removing people at a very significant
pace and in ways that I am concerned may present some due process
violations.
Since the end of title 42 last May, the Biden administration has
removed or returned over 630,000 individuals and members of family
units, just since last May.
This is more than the number of people removed or returned in all of
fiscal year 2019 under the Trump administration.
The resolution also alleges that the Biden administration is
violating the mandatory detention statutes by not detaining enough
people.
However, no administration, including the Trump administration, has
ever been able to comply with those statutes because no Congress has
ever appropriated the extraordinary levels of funding such compliance
would require.
To detain everyone that the law requires to be held in mandatory
detention would require Congress to appropriate over $35 billion a
year, a number 10 times higher than what Congress appropriated this
year or then-President Trump ever requested for detention.
When Democrats have proposed giving DHS the resources it needs to do
its job, the Republicans have consistently said ``no''.
We need to work together to address our broken immigration system.
Enforcement alone cannot fix it. We know this because an enforcement-
only approach has largely failed for three decades.
We need to update our immigration system so that it meets the needs
of our country. We need a balanced, bipartisan approach that expands
lawful pathways.
This will help relieve pressure on the border and allow people to
come to this country in an orderly and efficient way, but Republicans
don't want to engage in real legislating that might actually solve
problems and deliver meaningful reform.
They want to continue to demagogue and fearmonger with meaningless
resolutions containing nothing but empty rhetoric designed to score
cheap political points.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution, and I
reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman who says
that enforcement won't fix it that enforcement did fix it under the
Trump administration.
His policies produced the most secure borders we have had in our
lifetimes. It was this President who reversed those policies and
initiated this mass illegal migration that we are now suffering.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Tony
Gonzales), the author of this resolution.
Mr. TONY GONZALES of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from
California for yielding time. I thank Chairman Jim Jordan and the
Judiciary Committee for bringing this to the floor. I thank Speaker
Johnson and Leader Scalise for bringing this to everybody's attention.
I live it every day. People talk about it. My district is half of the
southern border. The facts are this: The border is as bad as it has
ever been, and it wasn't always this way.
Under President Trump, the border was secure. Under President Trump,
remain in Mexico worked. Under President Trump, the PACER program
worked. Under President Trump, other countries respected the United
States, and under President Trump, Americans were put first, not last.
Now, what does that mean? I have quickly realized that it is only
President Trump that can solve this problem.
This body has no interest in solving this border crisis. They just
want to talk about the problem and not actually solve the problem.
Meanwhile, the issue is: I live the problem, right. High-speed chases
come through my town every single day. Our schools go into lockdown
every single day.
Yesterday, there were 7,000 people that came into this country
illegally. Last month, there were 219,000 people that came into this
country illegally.
We are on pace for 2.5 million people to enter this country
illegally, and the Biden administration does nothing. The Senate and
Congress has done nothing. It has been all words. It has been all talk.
This resolution does one simple thing. Put your vote where your words
are. If you truly believe in securing the border, you will vote ``yes''
on this resolution. If you don't care about the people who live along
the border, if you don't care about the people that are dying from
fentanyl, it is very simple, vote against the resolution. The American
people deserve to know who is going to be with them and who is not
going to be with them.
Right now, more than ever, this crisis is spreading. It is growing.
On December 20, there were 10,000 people under the bridge in Eagle
Pass. Who was there? I was the only Member of Congress to show up.
[[Page H2787]]
Three weeks later, we had over 60 Members of Congress show up in
Eagle Pass, and guess what? That bridge was completely cleared out.
What does that mean? That means showing up matters, not just in
Washington but throughout our country.
Two years ago, there were thousands of Haitians under a bridge in Del
Rio. All of a sudden, that went away. Why did that go away? Because the
Biden administration started doing one simple thing that the Trump
administration had done for so long.
This is the secret sauce. You deport people that are here illegally,
period. You do that, and the problem goes away.
What you have is an administration that wants this. This crisis is
absolutely created by the administration, it is fueled by the
administration, and the administration has become addicted to the
funding that it is doing to drive these places.
Oh, by the way, this doesn't just impact my community, which is half
of the southern border, Americans all over the country are dying from
fentanyl.
Americans all over the country are feeling this influx of people that
are here illegally, and all of a sudden, you have people from Denver
and New York and Chicago going: Wait a second. What about me? What
about our roads? I am a U.S. citizen. What about my children? What
about my future?
For some reason, the Biden administration has put America last in
this equation, and it needs to stop.
That stops by us. Let's vote on it today. Where are you at? Are you
with America? Are you with people that enter this country illegally?
I have met many of these folks. I was in Del Rio 3 weeks ago. There
was a family that walked up to the bridge, a beautiful young lady with
two beautiful children. She walks up to the bridge, and in Spanish, she
says: I was told to come here for a better life.
Guess what? I have been blessed to be born in the United States of
America. That family was not. Guess what? As sad as that situation is,
she does not qualify for asylum.
There needs to be a different route. The asylum route that is
happening is a dead end. These people do not qualify for asylum, nor
will they ever qualify for asylum, so they need to stop entering our
country illegally, and the American families that live here need to be
put first above everything else.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman of three things that he
seems to have forgotten.
One, just since the end of title 42 last May, the Biden
administration has removed or returned over 630,000 individuals and
members of family units.
This is more than the number of people removed or returned in all of
fiscal year 2019 under the Trump administration.
I would also remind the gentleman that this legislation does nothing.
It simply denounces the Biden administration. It does nothing. It has
no operable clause. It is pure propaganda for political reasons. It
does nothing to solve the immigration problem.
Third, I would remind the gentleman that the Senate negotiated a very
strong immigration bill approved by Senator Lankford, the second-most
conservative Member of the Senate. Mitch McConnell said it was the
strongest immigration bill he had ever seen. The Senate was willing to
pass it until former President Trump said, don't pass it because I
would rather have an election issue than solve the problem.
The fault for the immigration problem now is President Trump's for
preventing the Senate from passing that bill and the Republicans' fault
for going along with him politically.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the
distinguished gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).
Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this absurd and
pointless resolution.
I will say that I actually agree with the previous speaker across the
aisle, my friend across the aisle, when he said that this body wants to
do absolutely nothing that actually solves the situation at the border.
I agree with my friend across the aisle that this body, controlled by
the Republican majority, has no interest in doing a single thing.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, we keep voting on resolutions that do
nothing. They are pointless, they are absurd, and they are a tired
recycling of the same talking points that we hear every day from the
majority.
Frankly, the majority is not trying to hide it. Whole sections of
today's resolution, including its title and 12 of the 32 whereas
clauses are copied and pasted from the other grievance-airing
resolution that we considered in March, so these aren't even new.
These are the same things that we are voting on over and over again
because there aren't actual solutions that Republicans are willing to
move forward on that would fix the immigration system.
{time} 1245
Likewise, 2 weeks ago, we voted on a pointless rehashing of H.R. 2,
the Republicans' extreme, cruel, and unworkable immigration bill that
is going nowhere fast.
What are we doing here, Mr. Speaker? Why does the majority insist on
wasting our time with these bills filled with nothing but empty
rhetoric designed to try and weaponize the issue of immigration instead
of solving it?
What we should be doing is talking about how to create a bipartisan,
workable immigration system that allows Americans to reunite with their
families, allows American businesses and universities to attract the
best and the brightest, and create a workable process so that people
wouldn't be forced to go to the border as the only way here. We should
be talking about the fact that immigrants are good for our country and
good for our economy. That is what the majority of Americans believe,
despite all of the rhetoric from the other side.
One in four American doctors were born abroad, and roughly 45 percent
of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of
immigrants. Seventy percent of agricultural workers are immigrants.
Immigrants feed us, they heal us, and they help ensure that the country
remains an economic powerhouse.
We could be here on the floor embracing the positive impacts of
immigrants rather than demonizing them, finding ways to allow people to
work more quickly to fill the shortages that we have in our labor
sector.
The Congressional Budget Office recently announced that new
immigrants will add $1 trillion in previously unexpected revenue to our
country's GDP between 2023 and 2034. Similarly, the Department of
Health and Human Services found that over a 15-year period, asylees and
refugees alone contributed nearly $124 billion more in revenue than
they received in services from the government. Documented and
undocumented immigrants pay tens of billions of dollars in taxes every
single year.
Instead, what are we doing here on the floor? The same tired rhetoric
that we hear every single week. The majority insists on demonizing
immigrants and the border.
It is true that we desperately need to fix a broken immigration
system that hasn't been updated in over 30 years, but we cannot do
that, we cannot solve that problem just through harsh enforcement
measures alone. We have been trying that approach for 30 years under
different Presidents, and every time it fails.
The truth is that the immigration system is all connected. People are
coming to the border because the legal immigration system has not been
updated in three decades, and they cannot find another pathway to come
under.
The wait time for some legal permanent residents to bring their
families into this country is over a century long, a century to bring
your own family to this country. Employers are begging us to modernize
the employment-based immigration system, because the limits on high-
tech visas were set when floppy disks were the height of technology,
and people cannot hire the people they need. The small number of
immigration judges that we have are absolutely crushed under a massive
backlog of asylum cases so extensive that it is now taking people over
8 years to get a hearing.
Under these circumstances, it should not surprise anyone that some
desperate people see coming to the border
[[Page H2788]]
as their only option, especially when they are fleeing for their lives
from countries that cannot or will not protect them. If they are
willing to face the dangers of the journey and deal with unscrupulous
actors like cartels to get to safety here, even the most draconian of
policies will not deter them.
That is why, despite what you hear from the other side, even when
former President Trump implemented the policies that this resolution
holds up as the cure to all of our problems, encounters at the border
actually went up, not down. They didn't work.
Instead of talking about these failed policies, we could be
discussing the countless, real, bipartisan solutions that passed when
Democrats held the House majority, solutions like the Dream and Promise
Act, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, bills that would fix real
gaps in the immigration system, provide lawful status to people who
have been contributing to our communities across the country for
decades, and actually make improvements that would relieve pressure on
the border. We could be trying to pass the kinds of investments that
would actually increase the number of immigration judges and asylum
officers that would help speed up the process and make it work
effectively.
Will any of those things make it to the floor in this Congress under
a Republican majority whose only goal is to keep this issue out there
as an election issue, just as former President Trump told them to do?
No, we are just going to spend our time debating pointless resolutions
that do not a single thing to fix the real situation of a broken
immigration system.
We are going to keep debating nonbinding resolutions filled to the
brim with mistruths and disinformation.
Mr. Speaker, I hope we can one day get back to actually governing in
this House, but I fear that today is not that day.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman seems to confuse legal immigrants who
obey all of our laws and do everything our country asks of them with
illegal immigrants whose first act is to disobey our laws.
Legal immigration is a boon to our Nation, but that is not what we
are addressing here. There is no point to legal immigration if we are
going to allow every immigrant who wants to do so to illegally enter
our country.
The people I found who are the angriest about this crisis are the
legal immigrants who came to this country obeying our laws, respecting
our sovereignty, and doing everything our country asked of them, while
this administration allows 6.5 million illegal immigrants to cut in
line in front of them.
The ranking member would gaslight us by claiming that there were more
removals under Biden than under Trump. Here are the actual numbers.
Under Trump, ICE removed 935,000 illegal aliens; under Biden, 274,000.
The criminal numbers are even more disturbing. This past year, Mr.
Biden removed 60 percent fewer criminal illegal aliens than Trump did
in 2019.
In other words, despite massive increases in illegal migration, we
have seen a massive decrease in criminal removals. We are seeing the
results every day in murders and assaults on American streets and at
empty chairs at America's family dinner tables.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Van Drew).
Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, since day one in office, President Biden
has chosen illegals over American citizens. We are now approaching 10
million illegal entries from individuals from all over the world, many
parts of the world where they are our enemies such as China, Russia,
Iran, and others. We don't know who they are, we don't know what they
are about, we don't know why they are here, but a lot of it is not
good.
Because of the President's efforts, we now live in one of the most
dangerous points in American history. Make no doubt about it: His FBI
Director says he has never seen so many elevated threats to our
national security in his entire career. That was his Christopher Wray.
Innocent Americans, like Laken Riley, have been senselessly murdered
by illegal immigrants. Law enforcement officers, like Christopher Gadd,
have been killed by illegal immigrants. I won't go through the list of
one after another after another good, law-abiding, loving Americans who
are dead. They are not with us. Their families grieve. Most Americans
grieve.
Students have been kicked out of their schools to house illegal
immigrants and have to learn remotely. Cities and towns across America
have cut public safety and education budgets as well to cover the
welfare of illegal immigrants, because in many cities and towns we are
paying for their housing, we are paying for their clothing, we are
paying for their travel, and we are giving them debit cards. We are
paying for so many things, including healthcare, that some good
Americans don't even have as we speak here and debate this right now.
It is the Biden border agenda. It is what he is about. When you allow
millions of unvetted people into our country, you have a reason. When
you don't know where they are going, what they are doing, what they are
about, you have a reason. When you actually hinder law enforcement's
ability to apprehend, detain, and deport, which is the answer, you have
a reason. You are making America less safe.
He can fix this crisis today. Today, as we speak, he can fix it. It
took him 1 day to undo and rescind every effective Trump border policy
that we had, and it could take him less than 1 day to reinstate them.
America needs to have borders. America needs to be safe. Every day
that goes by without doing so will only result in more lives lost. Mr.
Speaker, that is what we are debating today. Do we want more
individuals to die because of this policy?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. DesJarlais). The time of the gentleman
has expired.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the
gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, there are more drugs and human trafficking
at the hands of cartels at our border and more threats to our national
security. Every day this President allows this crisis to continue, it
becomes apparent to me--and this is harsh, but I believe it is true--
the chaos is intentional. He is seeking to change the very fabric, the
very structure, the America that we know to forever to hold on to his
own political power. That must be condemned in the strongest possible
terms.
No, this isn't a waste of time. No matter how many times it takes, no
how many times we have to say it, we will not succumb, we will not give
up, and we will not stop, because we are fighting for the United States
of America, and it is worth it.
Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution, and I urge its passage.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
All the Members on the other side forget several things. They forget
that we had the strongest border bill that might have gone a long way
toward solving this problem that the Senate was willing to pass, but
President Trump said don't pass. He said in so many words: I don't want
a solution; I want a campaign issue.
They forget that the President has asked for a lot more money so that
instead of someone coming in and claiming asylum--maybe he deserves it;
maybe he doesn't--and getting a date in court 5 years later and then
disappearing, you would have enough judges to give him a date in a
couple of weeks and either grant him asylum if he is entitled to it or
deport him swiftly if he is not entitled to it.
The Republicans won't vote the money and they won't vote the bill
that would solve or go a long way toward solving the problem.
They also forget that this resolution doesn't do anything. All it
does is denounce Biden. That is all they have for this Congress,
resolution after resolution denouncing Biden, and H.R. 2, which is so
impossible that it got only 32 votes in the Senate, a Senate where
there are 49 Republican Senators.
They don't want to solve the problem. They just want to talk about
it. That is all they are doing about it now. It is total nonsense and
not worthy of the time of this body.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
[[Page H2789]]
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I would remind the gentleman who says that the President has asked
for more money, when I was at the border last year in Yuma, I spoke
with a group of Border Patrol agents, line agents. That is the only
time in my life that Federal employees said: Don't send us any more
money.
{time} 1300
They said that because they felt that the administration would simply
use that money to process more illegals into the country even faster.
This is a deliberate policy of this administration, and it won't
change until this administration is changed.
As for the Senate bill the gentleman has referenced multiple times,
let me remind him that the bill would not have ended Biden's open-
border policies. It would have institutionalized them.
Current law gives the President full authority to secure the border.
Trump proved that. Current law requires asylum claimants to be
detained. Trump did that.
This bill would have left future Presidents powerless to secure the
border until illegal immigration reaches 4,000 a day, 1.5 million a
year, and would have required they be released into our country. That
is the Democrats' idea of immigration reform: a guaranteed 4,000
illegal immigrants being released into our country every day. That is
what they call a tough border bill.
H.R. 2, which was the genuine border security bill, got 46 votes in
the Senate last year and Democrats' support in the House just a couple
of weeks ago.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr.
Molinaro).
Mr. MOLINARO. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, my colleagues across the aisle are spending a great deal
of time arguing against a piece of legislation they claim has no
purpose, is meaningless, and only denounces the policies of the Biden
administration.
The policies of the Biden administration are due denouncing. There is
little question that if this were a fire, then the executive would send
the fire department. If it were a hurricane, the executive would send
FEMA, but because this is a crisis of this President's making, he has
chosen not to offer any response but to allow the crisis to continue.
I remind my colleagues across the aisle that, yes, sure, the
immigration system is broken. I wasn't here to break it. A couple of my
colleagues have been here long enough to fix it several times over.
The law as it relates to securing our border is clear: We are the
legislature. We adopted the law. The President and the executive branch
have the responsibility to execute the law.
Instead, he has surrendered the southern border to drug cartels that
are not only trafficking deadly drugs, synthetic opioids, and fentanyl
but also trafficking human lives.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are like some sort of
delusional Wizard of Oz: Pay no attention to the crisis at the border.
Pay no attention to the chaos in our cities. Pay no attention to the
students taken out of schools so that cities like New York can shelter
immigrants and migrants that they welcome. Don't pay attention to any
of it. Look over there to Donald Trump. Don't look behind the curtain.
That is because, Mr. Speaker, you will find that this President, with
the stroke of a pen, could reestablish the executive orders and take
the emergency action necessary to secure our border, protect our
citizens, and save lives.
Instead, this President has allowed a crisis, and it is worth
denouncing over and over again because it has caused chaos, led to
crime and the loss of lives, and fueled instability in our communities.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the
gentleman from New York.
Mr. MOLINARO. We know this as New Yorkers because, despite the
protestation otherwise, the State of New York has opened its arms.
Then, when thousands upon thousands of migrants find their way to the
city of New York and are relocated to other parts like upstate New
York, which I represent, the State starts to complain.
Enough is enough. The President needs to wake up and take this crisis
seriously. It is not progressive. It is cruel, and he must take action.
Yes, his current policies are worth denouncing.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I remind the gentlemen and gentlewomen on
the other side of the aisle that when you talk about various victims of
migrant crime, the FBI statistics show that the percentage of crime
committed by migrants is lower than the percentage of crime committed
by native-born Americans. Migrants, legal and illegal, seem to be more
law-abiding, on average, than native-born Americans. So, to use a
specific example to say that this is the fault of the immigration
policy is nonsense.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the
Judiciary Committee for yielding.
I would like to pose a rhetorical question to the gentleman: Where is
the wall? Where is the wall that has been talked about now for a
decade-plus?
I ask because others have had the same message, and here they come.
Where is the wall?
Our friends on the other side of the aisle seem to fill their
legislative agenda with platitudes, promises, broken promises, and ``I
am going to get it done.'' The American people don't need ``I am going
to get it done.''
What the American people need is to ensure that we have added more
Border Patrol officers, which we have done under the Biden
administration's plans. We will be doing that for Customs and Border
Patrol. We will be doing that under the Biden effort. In addition, we
will be doing more training and more recruitment.
We know that a wall, no matter how much you do, is always going to be
overcome--not like the song, ``We Shall Overcome,'' when we do want to
overcome in a better life and in a better world.
This is just a lot of talk. Mr. Speaker, I came to say that here is
another resolution. There is no action in this resolution. It is a lot
of talk.
As you remember, Mr. Speaker, how we got here was a bill that was so
crushing that Republicans in the Senate could not vote for it, and that
was H.R. 2. The resolution condemns many of the same policy choices on
immigration, and they asked to be reversed in the last resolution. That
is how bad it is. They want to reverse their own work.
Republicans now claim that no legislation is needed. Isn't that
ridiculous, Mr. Speaker? They now have a bill that says that the other
bills were not needed, don't listen to us.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote against this senseless, do-
nothing resolution. Let's come together and support President Biden's
leadership on immigration reform.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to direct their remarks
to the Chair.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, we just heard that immigrants are less
likely to break the law than native-born Americans. Tell that to the
angel families whose family tables have empty chairs because of the
very policy that this bill condemns.
Put aside the fact that illegal aliens shouldn't be in this country
to commit crimes in the first place because when the Federation for
American Immigration Reform looked at reimbursement requests from the
States for the cost of locking up illegal aliens, they found that
illegals are 231 percent more likely to be jailed for crimes in
California, 440 percent more likely in New Jersey, and 60 percent more
likely in Texas.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr.
Yakym).
Mr. YAKYM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution, which
denounces the Biden administration's failed border policies, and I do
so because of this chart next to me.
I have sat here and listened to the debate of who is responsible and
why. Let's look at the facts and the data. This chart shows
southwestern border crossing encounters over the first 38
[[Page H2790]]
months of the last six Presidential terms. It doesn't say whose line it
is, but if you guessed the Biden administration is the red one at the
top with nearly six times the number of illegal border crossings, then
you would be correct, Mr. Speaker.
The seeds of this crisis were planted on day one when 64 executive
orders were signed by President Biden that undermined border security
and encouraged illegal immigration. What followed has been an
unprecedented surge of illegal immigration.
Instead of acknowledging this failure, we get denial. Biden
administration officials wrote off the crisis as ``cyclical'' and
``seasonal'' right about here, 11 months into his term.
Biden administration officials continued to insist that the border
crisis was just part of the normal ``ebbs and flows'' at 35 months into
his Presidency.
President Biden only finally admitted that the border is ``not
secure'' all the way up there at the top, right at the 36-month mark.
What changed, Mr. Speaker, from ``ebbs and flows'' to just 2 weeks
later that the border is ``not secure''?
Mr. Speaker, there were no laws that changed during that time, just
the will to enforce them.
The Biden administration created this crisis at the border with the
stroke of a pen and these 64 executive orders, and, Mr. Speaker, he can
end it with the stroke of a pen.
Be that as it may, there is no leadership. Instead, Biden
administration officials treat border policy like a hot potato because
it is politically thankless, and it shows.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Gonzales, for introducing this
resolution that methodically and thoroughly documents the Biden
administration's border failures, and I urge my colleagues to vote
``yes.''
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to
close.
Mr. Speaker, whatever complaints House Republicans may have with the
Biden administration's immigration policies, this resolution will do
absolutely nothing to address them.
They have had plenty of opportunities to work with Democrats on
bipartisan solutions to reform our broken immigration system, and they
have walked away time and again. Most recently, they rejected a
bipartisan border deal negotiated by one of the most conservative
Republicans in the Senate because Donald Trump told them to. He and
they would rather preserve the issue for the upcoming election than
actually work to solve problems.
So, here we are again, for the third time already this year, with a
meaningless, nonbinding resolution that talks tough and accomplishes
nothing. What better way to sum up this Republican Congress?
Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this meaningless
resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, the American people need to understand that this policy
is deliberate. If you voted for this administration, then this is
exactly what you voted for. If you are surprised by that, then you
weren't paying any attention because this is exactly what the Democrats
promised to do. This is exactly what they have done, and this is
exactly what they have defended for the last 3 years in this House.
The laws didn't change 3 years ago; the Presidency changed. An
administration that enforced the most secure borders in our lifetimes
was replaced by one that deliberately opened them to the world.
Last year, House Republicans passed legislation that will make it
easier for future Presidents like Donald Trump to enforce our
immigration laws and harder for Presidents like Joe Biden to undermine
those laws, but that will require a new Senate and a new President.
The cold, hard truth is that this growing crisis cannot be fixed by
bills that Senate Democrats won't pass and that Biden won't sign or
enforce if they are signed.
This crisis can be fixed only by replacing this entire administration
and their enablers and abettors in Congress with those who are devoted
to securing our borders, restoring our sovereignty, defending our
people, and enforcing the rule of law. That can only be done by the
American people at the ballot box.
Until then, at every opportunity, we will decry and condemn these
policies that are bringing such suffering and such harm upon our great
Nation. Let us pray there is still time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 1137, the previous question is ordered
on the resolution and the preamble.
The question is on adoption of the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
____________________