Laken Riley Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 7511, the House Republicans' unconstitutional attempt to violate the separation of powers doctrine.

While I take issue with many aspects of this bill, I am particularly concerned that this bill is a blatant effort to overturn the Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling in United States v. Texas and wrongly blame the Biden administration for three decades of border enforcement challenges.

In the Texas case, States sued the Department of Homeland Security about border enforcement. Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, writing for the 8-1 majority, stated that Texas did not have standing in its lawsuit against the Federal Government. He wrote:

The threshold question is whether the States have standing under Article III to maintain this suit. The answer is no.

This bill does not change the Supreme Court's clear ruling. Determining whether States can bring suit in this type of immigration case is a power that is vested in the Federal courts, not Congress.

Justice Kavanaugh also made clear that the discretion to arrest and detain aliens is a power granted to the executive branch and that:

Executive branch does not possess the resources necessary to arrest or remove all of the noncitizens covered by the Federal immigration laws.

That reality is not an anomaly. It is a constant.

Kavanaugh noted, in addition, that: ``For the last 27 years . . . all five Presidential administrations have determined that resource constraints necessitated prioritization in making immigration arrests.''

That means DHS cannot detain everybody, so the executive branch, not the States, have to make choices. Unfortunately, this bill would not give DHS the resources to change that.

Instead, House Republicans rely on political stunts, like impeaching Secretary Mayorkas, even though that won't fix the problem at the border. The bipartisan Senate bill that House Republicans refuse to even debate actually would help to address these problems, but the majority won't bring that bill to the floor for a vote. If the Republicans did, it would pass. That is because we all know we need more border agents and more judges to eliminate the backlog of immigration cases.

However, the Republicans are not proposing more resources or any legislation that might truly make a difference.

This bill was not a serious attempt to address the actual border security needs and, as such, I would urge my colleagues to oppose it.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

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