Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Moore's efforts to help communicate the message the American people need to see, not just tomorrow night from one side, but as best as we can maybe looking at the other side of the issues.

If you could look around the room here, you would see some of the special equipment for the event that is starting to be set up, extra cameras, lighting on the House floor so that it is illuminated in a way that shows up well on TV. Unfortunately, what is not illuminated well enough is the record of this White House in supporting the needs of our Nation.

With the State of the Union tomorrow night, these 3-plus years have been, indeed, chaotic, and you could even say a full-fledged crisis in the making or being made.

Over the last few years, President Biden has made a lot of decisions and implemented a lot of policies that have ultimately led to a 17.9 percent rise in inflation since he took office. The cost of rent, electricity, and household goods are actually becoming out of reach for many Americans.

How can these things become out of reach?

I grow food. I am a farmer in my real life in northern California at home. Food has always been for many, many decades for Americans such a low-cost item, they didn't even have to think about it.

Why is it reverting to a situation where we are more like a third world country and food is hard to afford? Energy, driving our cars around, the whole works, housing--housing is becoming almost unaffordable. What has changed?

Our Nation is less safe than before, with rising rates of carjackings and attacks on law enforcement officers. You are not safe in your home.

Right here in this town, in D.C., is an example of a carjacking affecting one of our colleagues in this body, attacked in what may seem like a fairly safe neighborhood. What is going on here?

Our country has been weakened on the world stage as well. President Biden caters to oil oligarchs in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and even Russia.

He hastily removed U.S. troops from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to take over after all those years of our side fighting for freedom in those areas and to have at least a modicum of a government that would work for people over there. On top of that, we needlessly lost the lives of over a dozen soldiers on that hasty, poorly planned withdrawal.

One of our other allies, one of our strongest allies in the whole world, Israel, he is walking back support for that great country, that great ally.

His Vice President, Kamala Harris, basically threw Israel under the bus with her comments recently. What is this all about? What are we going to hear in the State of the Union that you could actually point to as a positive?

I hate to be negative. I hate to be, like, oh, partisan stuff that you can't find agreement on this or that, but it is really difficult with the state of things, from what the United States was 3 years ago, even amidst that COVID mess, to what we have now.

Unfortunately, the President has been chipping away even at our Nation's sovereignty. He has taken dozens of well-documented and concrete actions that have opened our borders and undermined our laws.

Our laws aren't broken. Immigration isn't broken. The enforcement, the action of the executive branch, to maintain them is the part that is broken.

We did pass H.R. 2 early on in this session to help fortify some of these laws, to help define better what asylum means, since they are defining it in the most loose possible ways.

For the past 3 years, the Biden administration has ignored the crisis. You can't get him or Kamala Harris hardly to go to the border at all. When they do, it is not the part of the border that we could easily document that has been the problem, and he is directly responsible for it.

I have to ask the question as I do occasionally: President Biden, whose side are you on with these actions you take?

He canceled the remain in Mexico program, which was working fairly well. He revoked title 42 for health concerns. He revoked it. He stopped construction of the border wall.

I had a chance to visit that most recently down in the Tucson area, on farther south. Stacks and stacks of the metal that would be used to build that fence were just laying there, dated October 2020 on some of that material.

He even promised a little over a year ago, well, maybe we will start filling in some of the gaps. There has been no action on that.

He has reprimanded border agents, making up bogus claims that the agents riding their horses with their reins were somehow whipping immigrants with that. That was finally dispelled, but not before the lie had spread all around the world from the administration and some of their cronies. They were just trying to do their jobs, and they are being impaired by this White House in doing so.

He allowed for the release of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into this country with no way to track them--actually, millions. Biden's Department of Homeland Security has now admitted that 40 percent of catch and release migrants have disappeared.

Last week, it was revealed that he never once spoke to his chief of the Border Patrol about any of this. Border security isn't even a priority for this administration, though they may want to put the dressing on it as we come down to an election here soon.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, is leading an effort to ban his Department from doing something politically incorrect by saying the words ``illegal immigrant.'' That is what they are focused on, not the actual immigration. That is their concern.

I have to ask again: President Biden, Secretary Mayorkas, whose side are you on? Is it the American people, or is it some other agenda? We can't tell.

Tons of fentanyl are being smuggled into our country, killing our youth. The price of fentanyl is coming down. It is so cheap now because there is such a massive supply--you know, supply and demand. It is getting cheap because it is so frequently available coming across our border illegally.

Deadly chemicals and people are being trafficked to work on the illegal marijuana grows, like we have so many of in northern California, just taking over the land.

Criminal aliens repeatedly broke the law, like the Venezuelan national who recently killed Laken Riley in broad daylight.

House Republicans know that border security is, indeed, national security for our whole country. Every State, as we have said time and again, is now feeling like a border State.

We did pass the strongest border security bill in history in H.R. 2. Now, about a hundred yards that direction, Senator Schumer and the gang over there have refused to bring it up for a vote. Instead, they proposed a watered-down immigration bill that would allow--get this-- 1.8 illegal immigrants a year in our country. It codifies that.

Go ahead, 1.8 million, come on in. Once we reach that threshold, then we will start enforcing something.

How can you take a law or a bill idea like that even seriously?

They would be rewarded with immediate work permits and an ability to stay longer once they are identified. I mean, calling that a border security package is an unfunny joke.

President Biden's open border policies are putting Americans in true danger. This border crisis is responsible for the deaths of countless Americans and the destruction of countless American families.

I just saw a video back from 1995 when President Clinton stood right up there and gave a State of the Union Address and outlined the problem that illegal immigration is in displacing jobs and providing more danger for the American public. That was in 1995 when President Clinton, a Democrat, said that.

What has changed politically in that timeframe that now the Democrats are all for what is happening on our border or, at the very least, doing nothing about it?

They had a period of time when they controlled both Houses and the White House with President Biden just a little over a year ago. They had a 2-year window to do something about that. They had all the ability to line up the votes and the signatures they needed to do that. They did nothing.

Instead, they are saying it is Republicans that are blocking it. We have been for solid border policy since day one.

President Trump led the charge for 4 years on that, and they pushed back. They thwarted him. They thwarted funding for the border.

They want to send billions and billions overseas for other things when a fraction of that would secure our own southern border. Come on.

One more time: The President will be here tomorrow night, and that side of the room is going to be applauding everything. Our side? Some good, maybe some bad. It will be a mixed bag on this side of the room.

I have to ask the President: As you address us, remember, ask yourself, whose side are you on?

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