Homeland Security Improvement Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2203.

Over this past fiscal year, law enforcement has encountered nearly a million migrants illegally crossing the southwest border.

For months, records of migrant families and unaccompanied children overwhelmed obsolete Customs and Border Protection facilities, creating an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. And for months, Democrats did nothing. They said the crisis wasn't real. Then they said the President manufactured it.

Then, after months of ignoring pictures of children and families living in overcrowded conditions, Democrats finally agreed to the President's request for emergency funding. Now, thanks to that funding and the administration's efforts to reach agreements with Mexico and some Northern Triangle countries, the crisis has finally abated.

Congress should use this opportunity to advance a bipartisan bill to address the causes of the border crisis and prevent another one from happening. Unfortunately, Democrats have chosen to squander the opportunity. Instead, they decided to move yet another partisan messaging bill that stands no chance of becoming law.

All this bill does is waste taxpayers' dollars on a duplicative new office designed to demoralize law enforcement and serve the demands of illegal immigrants. It should really be called the illegal immigrant customer service act.

The bill creates a new ombudsman at the Department of Homeland Security to collect and review complaints made by illegal immigrants against Federal law enforcement officers.

The Department already has an Office of Inspector General and an Office for Civil Rights and Liberties required by law to collect and investigate complaints against DHS personnel, as well as recommended relief for the complainant. Both offices maintain tip lines for anonymous complaints and websites to collect complaints, and both regularly report to Congress on their caseload.

It is unclear how creating another bureaucrat with a duplicative mission will improve the current process. It is clear, however, that this new bureaucrat will further demoralize the men and women of law enforcement.

The bill empowers the ombudsman to scrutinize the training and conduct of ICE and CBP officers on an ongoing basis.

The bill also includes a bogus oversight panel comprised of so-called quality of life indicators to make recommendations on how ICE and CBP officers should carry out their law enforcement mission.

Every day, the men and women of ICE and CBP put their lives in danger to keep our families and communities safe. They faithfully and skillfully carry out their duty to enforce Federal immigration law. Congress should be moving legislation to thank them, not second-guess and criticize them.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation started out as an attempt by Democrats to appease radical leftwing open border activists. The original bill was chock-full of so many absurd provisions that the Speaker was forced to pull it from floor consideration in July. The bill has been rewritten six times to get it to this point where just enough Democrats will vote for it to pass it.

But it didn't have to be such a partisan exercise. We could have worked together to move comprehensive legislation to truly prevent another crisis at our border.

Republicans are ready and willing to work with Democrats on serious proposals to reform our asylum laws to reduce the pull factors for illegal immigration, to protect vulnerable families and children from exploitation by human smugglers, to expand migrant processing and long- term housing facilities to eliminate dangerous overcrowding, and to hire additional immigration lawyers and judges to reduce the unprecedented backlog in asylum cases.

When this partisan bill fails to move in the Senate, I hope Democrats will finally choose policy over politics and will agree to work with Republicans on solutions to our border security problems.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I find it amazing that the majority, the Democrat majority, would like to see us prioritize establishing electronic medical records for illegal immigrants when we still haven't been able to provide that for veterans in our country or our military, and we have been working on it for years.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, this bill demonstrates just how disingenuous Democrats are about securing our borders and fixing our broken immigration system. Their Caucus is in such disarray on this issue that it took them 10 weeks and a hatchet just to find a compromise among themselves. Now, they are going to send another partisan messaging bill to the Senate, where it will promptly die.

Congratulations on the press release.

Mr. Speaker, we watched an unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfold on our Southwest border this year. It used to be that when this country faced a crisis, Democrats and Republicans came together to solve it and ensure it didn't happen again. Unfortunately, that is no longer the practice under Democratic control.

When Democrats are ready to legislate with real solutions to problems this country faces, Republicans stand ready to work with them. In the meantime, I urge all Members to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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