Border Security
Floor Speech
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Mr. HILL of Arkansas. I thank my friend from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler) for her leadership on this issue. Thanks for letting us gather together on the people's House floor tonight and talk about this issue and try to lay out for the American people who are watching some of the facts associated with this situation. I am not sure they always get the full story.
When I came to Congress, I knew the only way to really understand this border security issue was to go to the border. Since I was elected in 2014, I have been down on the southwest border four times and am getting ready to go back in just a few days.
On those trips, I meet with Border Patrol agents, local law enforcement, county judges, citizens, and community leaders. We all talk about the issue of what is the definition of border security: the physical barrier aspect? the technology? the observation? the manpower? the coordination with local law enforcement?
We always talk about drugs and drug cartels. You have heard from our leader tonight that they outman and outgun American law enforcement, Federal and State.
Just last week, I got a note from my good friend that we lost another young person from my high school due to heroin and fentanyl overdose.
I carry a little packet of Sweet'N Low in my pocket, Mr. Speaker, because a gram of fentanyl, which is the size of a Sweet'N Low packet, has enough fentanyl in it to kill 500 Americans. So it is killing our kids, Mr. Speaker, and it is coming across the border with Mexico.
Physical barriers shape the strategic deployment of our force. That is why county judges support it, mayors support it, and our Border Patrol supports it. This is why, over the past 20 years, when President Bush proposed it, President Clinton proposed it, Bush 43 proposed it, and Obama supported it, we built fence, starting in San Diego. We see, where there is fencing, 90 percent reductions in people crossing illegally.
Fences work. Physical barriers work. Physical barriers shape our force deployment and allow us to better use our manpower and coordinate our very understaffed and undergunned forces.
Secondly, it is increasingly frustrating to me that this is a crisis of politics in this House Chamber and in the United States Senate. It is utterly hypocritical on the part of our leaders in the House and our minority in the Senate to not see this need for humanitarian assistance on the border and physical security on the border. Republicans have proposed this time and time again last year. We got no Democratic votes for it last year.
I want my friends on the other side of the aisle to be able to make the moral distinction between those who come to our country legally and those who come here illegally. It seems to me that is a straightforward promise. America is a nation of immigrants. We are the most generous and welcoming country in the world.
One other point I want to make before I close, my friend from Missouri, is to talk about people seeking asylum here, people coming to our border with no papers, no documentation.
There was a news story this week about the Bangladeshi pair of men trying to come in and cross the border, interviewed on national television. We see, time and time again, people come from Bangladesh and from all over the world. They come to Mexico; they come to our border; and they have no passport.
How do they come into the United States? They have no documents. They claim asylum, credible fear, and yet here, Mr. Speaker, is a driver's license handed to me by a Border Patrol agent in Chula Vista, California, of a Saudi Arabian born in the early 1990s, and yet we have no record of someone from Saudi Arabia crossing at Chula Vista in the time frame that this driver's license was found in the Chula Vista station outside San Diego.
We have a crisis on this border, and when people tell you there isn't one, they are not telling you the truth. That should terrify us that we don't know who is coming across our border, Mr. Speaker.
Therefore, I thank the gentlewoman from Missouri for holding this hour. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the American people about the drugs and the impact on our youth and the impact on our national security by not having a secure southern border.
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