Crisis At the Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, two weeks ago, I spent additional time at the U.S. border, which I think, by a mile, is the biggest crisis this country has.

It has recently been brought to my attention that the Rio Grande Valley sector, where I was at, recently had 20,000 people a week processed. They had never seen such a thing.

What difference does this make? The more people come across, first of all, it probably means more illegal drugs crossing the border, which means more fentanyl, which is the reason why we have 90,000 deaths a year in this country. Since they're processing more people, it means less Border Patrol agents to guard the more rural areas of the border, which means more people coming across.

Finally, we are in a situation, we found out, down there, when they turn people over with COVID to the nongovernmental entities, those entities do not have secure facilities, and it means people are flowing into this country who we already know have COVID.

Please, during this appropriations season, please add more money to our Border Patrol so we can get a handle on these ridiculously high numbers.

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