America in Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I urge the American people not to take their eyes off the ball. I honestly sometimes believe the reason the majority party is putting people like Steve Bannon in the headlines, or mandatory vaccines, as horrible as they are, or driving up the cost of gas to over $3 per gallon, it is to cause the American public to avert their eyes from the most long-term dangerous policy that the Biden administration is implementing, and that is what is going on, on the border.

I was down on the border last Thursday in the Yuma sector. So the American public understands, there are nine sectors along the border, and every time I go down there, I find more things that should scare the American people to death.

First of all, we have just the sheer number of people who are crossing the border. A year ago in July, for all nine sectors, an estimated 8,000 people were crossing the border. We are now up to over 100,000 people a month crossing the border.

As far as the type of people coming across the border, I saw something in the Yuma sector I hadn't seen before, and that is dozens of identifications scattered along the ground where people crossed from Mexico into Arizona. Why are people throwing away their identification prior to checking in at the Border Patrol? There is only one obvious reason. They don't want the United States to know who they are.

These people are paying the drug cartels to come here. If you are from Mexico, you are paying $3,000 or $4,000 a person. If you are from Central America, you are paying $6,000 to $8,000 a person. If you are from Brazil, you are paying over $10,000 a person.

The drug cartels are recruiting people by putting on Central American TV or Brazilian TV ads urging people to come here. There are some Americans who are taking out ads telling people it is not all it is cracked up to be to turn yourself over to the drug cartels.

But right now, clearly, many people are crossing the border. These are not people, by the way, coming across in desperation. They are people with very top-of-the-line shoes or top-of-the-line purses, well- done hair, well-done nails. People have to realize that people are not always coming here out of even a little bit of desperation. They are coming here because it has been advertised they will make more money coming here.

As far as families, in July, in all nine sectors, there were about 15,000 unaccompanied children coming here. You go down there and see children in what can only be described as pens, being held on mats as they wait for the United States to transport them wherever they want. They write on their clothes which address they should be delivered to, and we turn the children over to nonprofit organizations that will transfer these children to New York, to Denver, wherever they want to go.

It drives the Border Patrol up the wall because, of course, if any American took a 5-year-old child and dropped them off at the airport and said, ``Please deliver this child to Oregon,'' or Maryland or wherever, social services would be after them.

But the United States, due to neglect, has pushed a policy in which people south of the border are encouraged to turn their children over to the Border Patrol and transfer them wherever they want.

Of course, as we have more and more children come here, the Border Patrol cannot patrol the border because they have to spend all their time processing the little children. The more Border Patrol is not patrolling the border, the more people are just walking in here, without any vetting at all.

Last year in the Yuma sector, they would be processing maybe 25 people a day. This year it can be up to 700 people a day. And it is not a difficult thing.

The way they treat each other is kind of a sign that maybe they might not make the greatest people to have around America. They needed help recently because of fights between the Haitians and the Colombians. Is that a sign of the type of people that we are letting into our country?

Other things that you learn down there: In the past, when I would go down to the border, I was under the impression that if people had any symptoms, they were tested for COVID. Now, we don't want another 100,000 people a month here under any circumstances. But right now, I was told that we like to test them, but of course, you can't require people to be tested, which means we are letting people in this country who may well have COVID.

Now, I don't know what to make of that. I guess what I make of it is when the Biden administration requires mandatory vaccines for people, it is really not that important. They are just doing it to avert people's eyes because if it were that important, they would be requiring at least tests for people coming over the border. But they don't even require tests. We will just let them come here.

Other activities of the Biden administration clearly are acting as magnets to bring more people here. One of the reasons why the people on the Mexican side of the border, the Mexican military, does not seem to care as much now as they did a year ago is because why should they risk their lives taking on the drug cartels when the American Government, by all of their actions, indicate that they don't care whether we enforce the border?

Two examples. We have, of course, as well advertised free medical care for people coming here, and there are Border Patrol agents who believe people just come to the United States for the free, superior medical care.

In the reconciliation bill that is being passed here, people who come here illegally are getting free college. Talk about a magnet to come to the United States. Of course, it shows contempt for the American middle class that we are seeing more and more.

If you are a member of the American middle class and want to go to college, you take out those student loans, go $30,000 in debt, go $40,000 in debt, go $50,000 in debt. But if you are somebody showing up here illegally, you get free college. Talk about advertising that our administration does not even remotely care whether our immigration laws are being obeyed or not.

The other thing that we have moving through here, again, on the reconciliation package is we believe about 10 million more people coming here, who we did not appropriately, vet are going to be eligible for amnesty and allowed to become American citizens, which is a further magnet, bringing more people here.

While there are a lot of things filling up the newspapers today-- well, people don't read newspapers, but a lot of things filling up the TV screen or the computer screen--I want the American people to contact their legislators and pay attention to what is going on at the border.

There are people right now who permanently want to change America, and they are going to get away with it unless there is more of an uproar here saying: ``Get that immigration stuff out of the reconciliation package. Finally hire some more Border Patrol agents to see what is going on down there. And please, please, please go back, Biden administration, to the Mexican Government and renegotiate deals where we keep people south of the border.''

By the way, while I am talking about things that indicate there is a complete lack of caring on the southern border on the part of the Biden administration, when was the last time we saw Vice President Kamala Harris at the border? I tell you, if you go down to the border there are all sorts of Congressmen poking around, seeing what is going on with the most important issue facing America today. Where exactly is Kamala Harris, as she just brazenly ignores this crisis?

Please, America, wake up, and defend our southern border.

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