Providing for Consideration of H.R. Expanding Access to Capital Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Laken Riley Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I would note, as a point of clarification, the legislation on the floor, there are two main parts.
The first part that the gentleman from Massachusetts was referring to did not go through committee. He is correct regarding the part that dealt with the issue with respect to ICE detainers relative to theft, burglary, et cetera.
The second half of the bill that deals with standing for States to be able to get into court to challenge the administration's lawlessness with respect to parole and asylum, that part did go through committee and was, in fact, debated.
Again, I am trying to set the record straight. I am acknowledging that the first half didn't, but the first half, the part that deals with theft, burglary, and so forth, so that we can have an ICE detainer placed on someone, is designed to deal with, in part, what we are dealing with in response to Laken Riley.
What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not want to talk about and what we will not hear the President of the United States tomorrow night in this room talk about is Laken Riley.
My colleagues doth protest too much about a bill that is named after someone who was harmed, given the extent of her injuries. There is a whole website dedicated to the bills that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle find a way to name after somebody in the wake of some emergency.
The fact here is we have a young woman who was 22 years old who was killed by someone who was released under mass parole by the policies of this administration, by this President, and by this Secretary of Homeland Security. He is only the second Secretary to be impeached in the history of our country because he has violated his oath to the Constitution, ignored the laws, and endangered the American people.
The simple fact is the President of the United States and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--the radical progressive Democrats who are trying to remake America with wide-open borders--do not want to talk about Laken Riley. They do not want to talk about Kayla Hamilton, who was a 20-year-old with autism in Aberdeen, Maryland. A 17-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador was released into the country as an unaccompanied alien minor and killed Kayla Hamilton. He raped and beat her to death in her home in July 2022.
I do not believe that the President of the United States or my Democratic colleagues want to talk about Kayla Hamilton.
I don't believe that my Democratic colleagues want to talk about Aiden Clark, an 11-year-old boy in Ohio who was killed by a 35-year-old illegal alien who struck a schoolbus full of kids.
I don't think they want to talk about the 2-year-old in Montgomery County, Maryland, who was killed by somebody from Venezuela who was similarly released under mass parole under the policies of this administration, under this President, and under this Secretary of Homeland Security. They don't want to talk about that 2-year-old.
They don't want to talk about the adolescent girl who was raped by a Honduran who was released into the United States, again, under these policies. The simple fact of the matter is that is not what my colleagues want to talk about.
They don't want to talk about the young Texas girl, a cheerleader, murdered in the bathtub. She was found dead by her mom when her mom was expecting to see her at a cheerleading event subsequent to that.
They don't want to talk about that, and the President of the United States, most assuredly, will not talk about those Americans tomorrow night in this room.
He won't. He will try to hide behind a Senate bill. He will try to hide behind a Senate bill that would have had no chance of passage. They knew it wouldn't pass. He will hide behind a bill that would have codified the mass releases that are endangering the American people, a Senate bill that would not have fixed the parole policies that resulted in the death of Laken Riley.
These are all facts that we know to be true, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to hide behind the Senate bill because they know that their policies are indefensible.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation is one step in order to honor the memory of Laken Riley, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, my colleagues want to, as I said before, hide behind the Senate legislation to try to suggest that House Republicans are not addressing the issue. Well, everybody who has been paying attention to the issue knows that we did, in fact, pass legislation just under a year ago that directly addresses the issues that are plaguing American citizens on a daily basis. This is a real issue.
Again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to gloss over the real impact, not just on Texans, but as the folks that I met with in San Diego last week, what is happening to them and what is happening to their schools, what is happening to their jails, what is happening to their communities; and the people in Texas who have spent $12.5 billion to try to deal with border security--now having some success, by the way--doing our part to try to hold the line in Texas.
We are seeing the flow of the cartels moving into Arizona and California, which is no great thing for the country, but it is at least trying to relieve the pressure on Texas.
Also, the number of ranches, the number of people that I deal with all the time, but also the migrants. We just gloss over the little girls being sold into the sex trafficking trade. We gloss over the family in a stash house that my friend, who is a Federal judge, had to throw the book at somebody who was using this mom and her daughter to hold for a ransom of $25,000 against somebody who was here illegally in Baltimore. This is happening every day in our country.
I-35 and I-10, the intersection in San Antonio, which I represent, is a main thoroughfare of this trafficking of human beings, and this is all happening on the watch of the executive.
My colleagues want to try to pin the failure of open borders on a Congress for failing to give, what, more legislation and tools to a President who has the tools to do what is necessary to secure the border?
President Biden could deal with the border right now--everybody knows that--by enforcing the law, by enforcing existing law, law that requires detention, law that requires that you detain people who come to the United States, who--because we are a people who want to give people some sort of chance if they are dealing with a claim for asylum because they fear political persecution or religious persecution--have to make that claim. However, most Americans believe that we detain, adjudicate the claim, determine if it is legitimate, and do not allow our government, our executive branch, our President, to make a mockery of the laws by using parole and asylum authority to flood the American people with millions of people. We know this to be true.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have literally no defense to the reality that millions have been released into the United States. Millions have been flooded into our communities, our schools, our hospitals.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle just kind of smugly smirk at what we have to deal with in Texas, what sheriffs have to deal with in Texas, what we have to deal with in our schools, in our communities, when we have to find the dead bodies of migrants on our ranches, because that is what happens.
Is the President of the United States going to sit up there tomorrow night and talk about the dead migrants that we find on ranches in Texas? Is he going to have the nerve to do that, or talk about the 53 migrants who died in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio last year in the Texas heat? Is he going to have the nerve to do that? No, because they are his policies, his choices to ignore the law.
My Democratic colleagues want to somehow say that it is on the majority when we passed legislation to try to force the President to do what his job is and his duty under the Constitution. They have the temerity to try to say it is on the majority when it is, in fact, our Democratic colleagues who refuse to actually hold the executive branch accountable, as is required under the Constitution under separation of powers.
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