Termination of National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019
Floor Speech
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Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me also indicate that as a member of the Homeland Security Committee, the numbers of Mexicans from Mexico has decreased.
The numbers coming now are what we call OTMs, other than Mexican. They are coming and fleeing bloodshed in countries where they are being threatened with a decapitation of their head.
Mothers are being told that if you stay, we know you are pregnant, you can have the baby, and we will kill you after the birth. These are the stories that those of us who visited the border are hearing over and over again.
If there is a crisis, it is a humanitarian crisis. We, as Democrats, have no problem with funding the resources necessary for the border, including, as indicated, the increase in personnel, technology, and transportation equipment.
I have been to the border when the need for night goggles and other types of equipment were rendered important. Let us do the right thing. Vote on this resolution, and do the constitutional point of restoring order to this government.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of our Constitution and in defense of our republic and urge all members to join me in voting for H.J. Res. 46, which terminates the phony declaration of emergency issued by the President on February 15, 2019.
The reason this resolution is before us today is because of the petulant intransigence of a single person, the current President of the United States.
As a senior member of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Homeland Security, I have visited the southern border on numerous occasions in recent weeks and months and can state confidently that there is no national emergency or national security crisis that justifies the President's reckless and unconstitutional decision or compels the Congress to abdicate its responsibilities under Article I to check and balance the Executive Branch.
The President is only pursuing this tactic of declaring a national emergency after realizing that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was absolutely correct when she informed him that he did not have the support in Congress to require the taxpayers to pay for his broken promise that ``Mexico would pay for the wall, 100 percent!''
In fact, according to the latest Marist Poll, the most recent polling data available, Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the President's national emergency declaration by a 61 percent-36 percent margin.
The President's decision is opposed by both men and women in every region of the country, by every income group and education category.
National security experts across the political spectrum are unanimous in their assessment that the situation on the southern border does not constitute a national emergency, an assessment echoed by leading former Republican senators and Members of Congress.
They understand that after failing to convince the American people or Congress to pay for his ineffective, wasteful, and immoral multibillion dollar concrete wall, the President has now embarked on a course of conduct that is deeply corrosive of the constitutional system of checks and balances wisely established by the Framers and which has served this nation and the world so well for nearly 250 years.
Having failed miserably to achieve his objective in the constitutional legislative process, the President is trying a desperate 11th hour end-run around Congress with an unlawful emergency declaration that contravenes the will of the American people and negates the awesome power of the purse vested exclusively in the Congress of the United States.
The Congress will not tolerate this.
Despite being repeatedly admonished and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the President continues to propagate false information regarding the state of our southern border.
Mr. Speaker, these are the facts.
Net migration from Mexico is now zero or slightly below (more people leaving than coming) because of a growing Mexican economy, an aging population and dropping fertility rates that have led to a dramatic decrease in unauthorized migration from Mexico.
Migrant apprehensions continue to be near an all-time low with only a slight increase from 2017.
The combined 521,090 apprehensions for Border Patrol and Customs agents in fiscal year 2018 were 32,288 apprehensions fewer than the 553,378 apprehensions in 2016.
To put this in perspective, on average, each of the 19,437 Border Patrol agents nationwide apprehended a total of only 19 migrants in 2018, which amounts to fewer than 2 apprehensions per month.
In the last few years, an increased proportion of apprehensions are parents seeking to protect their children from the violence and extreme poverty in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
But even with more Central Americans arriving to our southern border seeking protection, total apprehension rates are still at their lowest since the 1970s.
The absence of a massive wall on the southern border will not solve the drug smuggling problem because, as all law enforcement experts agree, the major source of drugs coming into the United States are smuggled through legal ports of entry.
The southern border region is home to about 15 million people living in border counties in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
These communities, which include cities such as San Diego, Douglas, Las Cruces, and El Paso, are among the safest in the country.
Congress has devoted more U.S. taxpayer dollars to immigration enforcement agencies (more than $21 billion now) than all other enforcement agencies combined, including the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Secret Service.
The bulk of this money goes to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with a budget of $14.4 billion in fiscal year 2018 and more than 59,000 personnel.
CBP is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, and more than 85 percent of the agency's Border Patrol agents (i.e., 16,605 of 19,437) are concentrated on the southern border.
Expanded deployment of the military to the border to include active- duty troops could cost between $200 and $300 million in addition to the estimated $182 million for the earlier deployment by the President of National Guard to the border.
Mr. Speaker, having been soundly defeated legislatively by Congress, a co-equal branch of government, the President wants to finance border wall vanity project by diverting funds that the Congress has appropriated for disaster recovery and military construction.
The funds the President wants to steal were appropriated by Congress to help Americans devastated by natural disasters, like Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, or for other purposes like military construction.
Congress did not, has not, and will not, approve of any diversion of these funds to construct a border wall that the President repeatedly and derisively boasted that Mexico would pay for.
In fact, the President has admitted he ``didn't have to do this,'' but has opted to do so because ``I want to see it built faster.''
Mr. Speaker, just yesterday a bipartisan group of nearly 60 national security officials including former secretaries of state, defense secretaries, CIA directors, and ambassadors to the UN issued a statement declaring that ``there is no factual basis'' justifying the President's emergency declaration.
Instead of protecting our national security, the President's declaration makes America less safe.
The President is stealing billions from high-priority military construction projects that ensure our troops have the essential training, readiness and quality of life necessary to keep the American people safe, directly undermining America's national security.
The President's declaration clearly violates the Congress's exclusive power of the purse, and, if unchecked, would fundamentally alter the balance of powers, violating our Founders' vision for America.
Opposing the President's reckless and anti-American decision transcends partisan politics and partisanship; it is about patriotism, constitutional fidelity, and putting country first.
That is why nearly two dozen distinguished former Republican Members of Congress are urging Republicans in Congress to vote for H.J.R. 46 and uphold ``the authority of the first branch of government to resist efforts to surrender'' our constitutional powers to an overreaching president.
To quote Thomas Paine's Common Sense: ``In absolute governments, the King is law; so in free countries, the law ought to be King.''
Mr. Speaker, I urge all members to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, and reject the President's power grab; I urge a resounding Yes vote on H.J. Res. 46.
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Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
The only crisis is the constitutional crisis that has been created by the President of the United States by his direct and ill-conceived abuse of power which is noted in the Constitution as a violation of the Constitution.
It is sad that the President has declared a national emergency for the purpose of misappropriating funds from previously designated and important uses to build a wall, uses that would be dealt with in a national emergency in case of war that would then call for the building of direct materials and buildings necessary for troops engaging in war.
The only response to my good friend who has come back from the border and saw people going over the border is to engage more Border Patrol agents and train them to do the job that they are designated to do. We, as Democrats, support that.
Illegal border crossings are at a near 40-year low. Sixty national security personnel, ambassadors, CIA, DNI, and others have indicated that this is wrongheaded. It is wrong.
The President's declaration clearly violates Congress' exclusive power of the purse, and if unchecked, would fundamentally alter the balance of powers, violating our Founder's vision for America. That is unconstitutional.
To quote Thomas Paine in ``Common Sense,'' it says, `` . . . in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king.'' This is the abuse, the declaration, and we should vote for the underlying resolution to restore constitutional order.
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