Denouncing the Biden Administration's Immigration Policies

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1137, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 1112) denouncing the Biden administration's immigration policies, and ask for its immediate consideration.

The Clerk read the title of the resolution.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Res. 1112.

Mr. Speaker, in January, the Border Patrol chief in the Del Rio sector told House Republicans: I am standing in front of an open fire hydrant with a bucket. I don't need more buckets. I need somebody to shut off the hydrant.

President Trump did exactly that. His remain in Mexico policy had slowed illegal immigration to a trickle. The border wall was nearing completion with only construction gaps remaining to be closed.

ICE was actively enforcing court-ordered deportations, sending a strong signal around the world that illegal migrants would end up right back where they started, so they stopped coming.

On Inauguration Day, Mr. Biden reversed all of these successful policies, the first of more than 60 actions he has subsequently taken to undermine our immigration laws and open our border to the world.

The result has been the largest illegal mass migration in history. Since that day, over 4.6 million illegal migrants have been released into this country deliberately. While the Border Patrol has been overwhelmed, another 1.8 million known got-aways illegally entered, as well.

That is a total of 6.4 million illegals added to our population, larger than the entire State of Missouri, our 18th largest State with eight congressional districts. That is just in 3 years.

The impact has been devastating. Schools have been overwhelmed as classrooms are packed with non-English-speaking students. Hospitals have been forced to shift millions of dollars of care from Americans to illegals. In Yuma, Americans are very often sent to Tucson for maternity care because local beds are now taken by illegals.

The social safety net has been shredded by the deliberative admission of millions of impoverished illegals demanding free food, clothing, and shelter.

The number of terrorist suspects the Border Patrol has encountered has ballooned exponentially.

Law enforcement officials are warning that among the 1.8 million got- aways, mostly single, military-age men, there is likely a dangerous fifth column, which could soon launch devastating attacks within our borders.

Fentanyl brought in through the open border is killing hundreds of Americans every day. Democrats' sanctuary policies hamstring attempts to deport criminal illegal aliens. Worst of all, the admission of untold thousands of the most vicious gang members on the planet are now producing a terrible butcher's bill of murders and assaults on Americans.

This resolution speaks for Americans who have had enough, and it condemns these policies. I am afraid that is really all that we can do until the American people rise up and demand an administration and a Congress willing to restore our borders and to put Americans first.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman who says that enforcement won't fix it that enforcement did fix it under the Trump administration.

His policies produced the most secure borders we have had in our lifetimes. It was this President who reversed those policies and initiated this mass illegal migration that we are now suffering.

Mr. TONY GONZALES of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from California for yielding time. I thank Chairman Jim Jordan and the Judiciary Committee for bringing this to the floor. I thank Speaker Johnson and Leader Scalise for bringing this to everybody's attention.

I live it every day. People talk about it. My district is half of the southern border. The facts are this: The border is as bad as it has ever been, and it wasn't always this way.

Under President Trump, the border was secure. Under President Trump, remain in Mexico worked. Under President Trump, the PACER program worked. Under President Trump, other countries respected the United States, and under President Trump, Americans were put first, not last.

Now, what does that mean? I have quickly realized that it is only President Trump that can solve this problem.

This body has no interest in solving this border crisis. They just want to talk about the problem and not actually solve the problem.

Meanwhile, the issue is: I live the problem, right. High-speed chases come through my town every single day. Our schools go into lockdown every single day.

Yesterday, there were 7,000 people that came into this country illegally. Last month, there were 219,000 people that came into this country illegally.

We are on pace for 2.5 million people to enter this country illegally, and the Biden administration does nothing. The Senate and Congress has done nothing. It has been all words. It has been all talk.

This resolution does one simple thing. Put your vote where your words are. If you truly believe in securing the border, you will vote ``yes'' on this resolution. If you don't care about the people who live along the border, if you don't care about the people that are dying from fentanyl, it is very simple, vote against the resolution. The American people deserve to know who is going to be with them and who is not going to be with them.

Right now, more than ever, this crisis is spreading. It is growing. On December 20, there were 10,000 people under the bridge in Eagle Pass. Who was there? I was the only Member of Congress to show up.

Three weeks later, we had over 60 Members of Congress show up in Eagle Pass, and guess what? That bridge was completely cleared out. What does that mean? That means showing up matters, not just in Washington but throughout our country.

Two years ago, there were thousands of Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio. All of a sudden, that went away. Why did that go away? Because the Biden administration started doing one simple thing that the Trump administration had done for so long.

This is the secret sauce. You deport people that are here illegally, period. You do that, and the problem goes away.

What you have is an administration that wants this. This crisis is absolutely created by the administration, it is fueled by the administration, and the administration has become addicted to the funding that it is doing to drive these places.

Oh, by the way, this doesn't just impact my community, which is half of the southern border, Americans all over the country are dying from fentanyl.

Americans all over the country are feeling this influx of people that are here illegally, and all of a sudden, you have people from Denver and New York and Chicago going: Wait a second. What about me? What about our roads? I am a U.S. citizen. What about my children? What about my future?

For some reason, the Biden administration has put America last in this equation, and it needs to stop.

That stops by us. Let's vote on it today. Where are you at? Are you with America? Are you with people that enter this country illegally?

I have met many of these folks. I was in Del Rio 3 weeks ago. There was a family that walked up to the bridge, a beautiful young lady with two beautiful children. She walks up to the bridge, and in Spanish, she says: I was told to come here for a better life.

Guess what? I have been blessed to be born in the United States of America. That family was not. Guess what? As sad as that situation is, she does not qualify for asylum.

There needs to be a different route. The asylum route that is happening is a dead end. These people do not qualify for asylum, nor will they ever qualify for asylum, so they need to stop entering our country illegally, and the American families that live here need to be put first above everything else.

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman seems to confuse legal immigrants who obey all of our laws and do everything our country asks of them with illegal immigrants whose first act is to disobey our laws.

Legal immigration is a boon to our Nation, but that is not what we are addressing here. There is no point to legal immigration if we are going to allow every immigrant who wants to do so to illegally enter our country.

The people I found who are the angriest about this crisis are the legal immigrants who came to this country obeying our laws, respecting our sovereignty, and doing everything our country asked of them, while this administration allows 6.5 million illegal immigrants to cut in line in front of them.

The ranking member would gaslight us by claiming that there were more removals under Biden than under Trump. Here are the actual numbers. Under Trump, ICE removed 935,000 illegal aliens; under Biden, 274,000. The criminal numbers are even more disturbing. This past year, Mr. Biden removed 60 percent fewer criminal illegal aliens than Trump did in 2019.

In other words, despite massive increases in illegal migration, we have seen a massive decrease in criminal removals. We are seeing the results every day in murders and assaults on American streets and at empty chairs at America's family dinner tables.

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, since day one in office, President Biden has chosen illegals over American citizens. We are now approaching 10 million illegal entries from individuals from all over the world, many parts of the world where they are our enemies such as China, Russia, Iran, and others. We don't know who they are, we don't know what they are about, we don't know why they are here, but a lot of it is not good.

Because of the President's efforts, we now live in one of the most dangerous points in American history. Make no doubt about it: His FBI Director says he has never seen so many elevated threats to our national security in his entire career. That was his Christopher Wray.

Innocent Americans, like Laken Riley, have been senselessly murdered by illegal immigrants. Law enforcement officers, like Christopher Gadd, have been killed by illegal immigrants. I won't go through the list of one after another after another good, law-abiding, loving Americans who are dead. They are not with us. Their families grieve. Most Americans grieve.

Students have been kicked out of their schools to house illegal immigrants and have to learn remotely. Cities and towns across America have cut public safety and education budgets as well to cover the welfare of illegal immigrants, because in many cities and towns we are paying for their housing, we are paying for their clothing, we are paying for their travel, and we are giving them debit cards. We are paying for so many things, including healthcare, that some good Americans don't even have as we speak here and debate this right now.

It is the Biden border agenda. It is what he is about. When you allow millions of unvetted people into our country, you have a reason. When you don't know where they are going, what they are doing, what they are about, you have a reason. When you actually hinder law enforcement's ability to apprehend, detain, and deport, which is the answer, you have a reason. You are making America less safe.

He can fix this crisis today. Today, as we speak, he can fix it. It took him 1 day to undo and rescind every effective Trump border policy that we had, and it could take him less than 1 day to reinstate them.

America needs to have borders. America needs to be safe. Every day that goes by without doing so will only result in more lives lost. Mr. Speaker, that is what we are debating today. Do we want more individuals to die because of this policy?

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, there are more drugs and human trafficking at the hands of cartels at our border and more threats to our national security. Every day this President allows this crisis to continue, it becomes apparent to me--and this is harsh, but I believe it is true-- the chaos is intentional. He is seeking to change the very fabric, the very structure, the America that we know to forever to hold on to his own political power. That must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

No, this isn't a waste of time. No matter how many times it takes, no how many times we have to say it, we will not succumb, we will not give up, and we will not stop, because we are fighting for the United States of America, and it is worth it.

Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution, and I urge its passage.

I would remind the gentleman who says that the President has asked for more money, when I was at the border last year in Yuma, I spoke with a group of Border Patrol agents, line agents. That is the only time in my life that Federal employees said: Don't send us any more money.

They said that because they felt that the administration would simply use that money to process more illegals into the country even faster.

This is a deliberate policy of this administration, and it won't change until this administration is changed.

As for the Senate bill the gentleman has referenced multiple times, let me remind him that the bill would not have ended Biden's open- border policies. It would have institutionalized them.

Current law gives the President full authority to secure the border. Trump proved that. Current law requires asylum claimants to be detained. Trump did that.

This bill would have left future Presidents powerless to secure the border until illegal immigration reaches 4,000 a day, 1.5 million a year, and would have required they be released into our country. That is the Democrats' idea of immigration reform: a guaranteed 4,000 illegal immigrants being released into our country every day. That is what they call a tough border bill.

H.R. 2, which was the genuine border security bill, got 46 votes in the Senate last year and Democrats' support in the House just a couple of weeks ago.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, we just heard that immigrants are less likely to break the law than native-born Americans. Tell that to the angel families whose family tables have empty chairs because of the very policy that this bill condemns.

Put aside the fact that illegal aliens shouldn't be in this country to commit crimes in the first place because when the Federation for American Immigration Reform looked at reimbursement requests from the States for the cost of locking up illegal aliens, they found that illegals are 231 percent more likely to be jailed for crimes in California, 440 percent more likely in New Jersey, and 60 percent more likely in Texas.

Mr. Speaker, the American people need to understand that this policy is deliberate. If you voted for this administration, then this is exactly what you voted for. If you are surprised by that, then you weren't paying any attention because this is exactly what the Democrats promised to do. This is exactly what they have done, and this is exactly what they have defended for the last 3 years in this House.

The laws didn't change 3 years ago; the Presidency changed. An administration that enforced the most secure borders in our lifetimes was replaced by one that deliberately opened them to the world.

Last year, House Republicans passed legislation that will make it easier for future Presidents like Donald Trump to enforce our immigration laws and harder for Presidents like Joe Biden to undermine those laws, but that will require a new Senate and a new President.

The cold, hard truth is that this growing crisis cannot be fixed by bills that Senate Democrats won't pass and that Biden won't sign or enforce if they are signed.

This crisis can be fixed only by replacing this entire administration and their enablers and abettors in Congress with those who are devoted to securing our borders, restoring our sovereignty, defending our people, and enforcing the rule of law. That can only be done by the American people at the ballot box.

Until then, at every opportunity, we will decry and condemn these policies that are bringing such suffering and such harm upon our great Nation. Let us pray there is still time.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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