Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment Act of 2022
Floor Speech
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.
I oppose the EAGLE Act and encourage all Members to do the same.
The Biden administration has created the absolute worst border crisis in our history, and congressional Democrats have done nothing to address it. They won't even acknowledge that there is a crisis, with the exception of the gentleman in the Chair.
The crisis is real. It is having a negative impact on communities across the country, but President Biden has more important things to do than visit the border.
I visit the border on a regular basis, and every time I do, I hear a similar message.
First, the brave men and women of the Border Patrol are being overrun. They are tired of the administration not supporting their efforts to secure the border.
Second, illegal aliens enter every day because they believe that the Biden administration is going to let everyone stay.
Thirdly, our communities are running out of resources to deal with the real-world impacts of the Biden border crisis. Cities like New York City and Washington, D.C., complained when a few hundred illegal aliens were sent to their communities, but cities in Arizona are dealing with large groups of illegal aliens every day. We are now told, with title 42 expiring, that they will do direct releases into Arizona's communities because there is just simply no place to even hold them to process them.
Since President Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 4 million illegal aliens at the southwest land border. During the same time, the Biden administration has simply released more than 1.4 million of those illegal aliens into the country.
Under this administration, those aliens will never be removed from the country, and the 4 million number does not include the hundreds of thousands, probably more than a million, got-aways who enter the country illegally without being apprehended by the Border Patrol.
For example, in November alone, there were more than 73,000 known got-aways, with estimates of at least one unknown got-away for every known got-away. That is a total of 150,000 people. We don't know where they came from. We don't know where they are going. We don't know what their intentions are.
The numbers continue to get worse. Over the weekend, Border Patrol reported more than 16,000 encounters in 2 days, and that does not include known and unknown got-aways.
But according to DHS Secretary Mayorkas, the border is secure. In fact, he testified under oath that DHS has operational control of the border. A week later, he backtracked on that statement because DHS does not have operational control of the border, despite the fact that he is required to achieve and maintain operational control of the border.
Congress even defined what operational control means so that there would be no ambiguity. It is this: ``The term `operational control' means the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.''
I look forward to Secretary Mayorkas testifying before the Committee on the Judiciary next year and explaining whether he stands by his previous testimony that he is maintaining operational control of our border.
We know what he will say, because last month he told the Committee on Homeland Security that he believes the border is secure.
The Democrat-led Committee on the Judiciary hasn't held a single hearing on the crisis, and many Democrats on the committee deny that there is a crisis. At a hearing earlier this year, one Democrat committee member referred to this crisis as the ``supposed crisis at the southern border.''
I wonder if she still thinks it is just a supposed border crisis. Some of us in this room today know the reality of that border crisis.
The committee hasn't held a single hearing on the flow of fentanyl into this country.
The committee hasn't held a single hearing on the increase in the number of Border Patrol encounters with illegal aliens on the terrorist watch list.
You would think that the committee would be concerned with the fact that in fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol reported encountering 98 illegal aliens on the terrorist watch list.
To put that in perspective, for the years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined, Border Patrol only reported encountering 11 illegal aliens on the terrorist watch list.
Secretary Mayorkas couldn't even tell the committee if any of the illegal aliens on the terrorist watch list who were encountered by CBP were still in the country.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, he has no idea where those individuals are.
Republicans on the Committee on the Judiciary have repeatedly asked for hearings. Those requests have been ignored.
Instead of conducting oversight, Democrats have advanced bills to provide amnesty and further weaken our security, which are incentives to those who wish to illegally enter the United States of America.
The EB-4 issue, as explained by my colleague from California, Ms. Lofgren, it does not change the impact, as it provides an incentive for the cartels in their human trafficking expeditions.
The EAGLE Act will do nothing to secure our border or address the crisis that this administration has created, but it will dramatically alter our illegal immigration system in ways that most Members do not understand or fully appreciate.
Even the American Immigration Lawyers Association has opposed the bill. They acknowledge that the bill will benefit immigrants from a few countries, namely China and India, while adversely impacting those wishing to legally immigrate to the United States from almost all other countries.
Instead of rushing to pass this bill today, the House should be debating and passing legislation to require Secretary Mayorkas to enforce the law, to finish construction of the border wall, and to provide CBP and ICE with the resources they need to enforce the law.
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