Southern Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, during the last few weeks when we were back in our district, I had time, along with about 50 other Congressmen, to visit the Eagle Pass entryway at our southern border. From what I saw down there, that should be the number one issue this body tackles in January. It is more important than even our annual budget.

We saw a room in which 300 unaccompanied minors were at one time without either parent being allowed in the country. We heard guards talk about what it was like to work in December. We believe when the final numbers came out, over 300,000 people came here from other countries and crossed our southern border. Remember, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't that long ago--3 years ago--that that number was more like 10,000. So we have gone from 10,000 to 300,000.

I watched and as I heard in this, which is one of only nine sectors down there, in the last 33 days prior to that, people came here from 61 different countries. We have the whole world coming here as the Mexican drug cartels charge people $5,000, $10,000, and $12,000. I heard of somebody being charged $70,000 to come here from India.

Mr. Speaker, Congress needs to wake up. The President needs to bring that number back down to 5,000 or 6,000 from the 300,000 he is letting into America today.

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