Illegal Immigration

Floor Speech

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Mr. KNOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise as the newly elected Representative of North Carolina's 13th Congressional District. This being my first speech on the House floor, I want to take an opportunity to introduce myself to the House, to talk a little bit about our incredible district, and then highlight one of the single most important issues to me personally and one of the main motivating factors that led me to run for office: illegal immigration and the deep harm it inflicts on our country each and every day.

First, the 13th Congressional District of North Carolina stretches all the way from Lee County to the State's northern border, and it includes: Wake, Johnston, Harnett, Franklin, Caswell, Person, and Granville Counties along the way.

We tout a wide array of professions from dedicated farmers and retailers to manufacturers and medical professionals, providing the Nation and the world with food, fuel, clothing, and care.

On January 3 when I was sworn in to Congress, I was blessed and humbled to have my grandfather in the House Chamber with me. Also a lifelong North Carolinian, he fought and was wounded in World War II fighting the Nazis before coming home to start a business, raise a family, and serve his community in many ways for decades.

He and my father both inspired me to work hard and pursue a lifelong goal of serving as a Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of North Carolina, which I did for the better part of the last decade.

I proudly worked alongside law enforcement at every level, local, State, and Federal, to prosecute organized crimes in cases that touched every corner of the country.

This, of course, included drug cartels, human traffickers, those who were here to commit financial crimes, national gangs, and many, many more.

I saw how harmful policies weakened law enforcement and gravely wounded communities and households all over the country. The most glaring policy flaws involved the southern border.

As soon as the Biden administration took power, their decisions made one thing very clear: The policy flaws involving the southern border and the illegal immigration crisis, they were no blunders of the Biden- Harris administration. This was a conscious and deliberate policy to flood the Nation with illegal immigrants, not just from our neighbors to the south, but from all over the world.

Behind me is a chart. Many of the viewers may recognize it as the chart that President Trump was viewing when he turned his head, a divine miracle that saved his life. The chart itself shows directly that all President Biden and Kamala Harris had to do was nothing.

We can see that the border was secure and illegal immigration was descending. As soon as they took power, it was like a vertical rocket ship. There was no gradual increase. It was an immediate increase.

Me personally, I saw how the Biden-Merrick Garland DOJ put the brakes on enforcing immigration laws, purposely slowing immigration prosecutions down to a trickle.

Open borders and redirected efforts allowed the international criminal organizations not only to take hold in this country, but they took hold in such a way that it is far more pervasive than many Americans realize.

Yes, we see the effects, but most do not fully understand the wide- reaching influence of these bad actors. As a point in thesis, we must address illegal immigration now.

Now, I will say I was very glad to read the report yesterday of our new Attorney General, Ms. Bondi. On her very first day in office, she directed the DOJ to pause all Federal funding for sanctuary cities. I applaud the Attorney General for taking this important step and I will state it is high time that public officials in Democratically controlled cities and States around the country follow her lead and adhere to the rule of law.

It is because of the reckless open-border policies, again, designed and embraced by the Democratic Party, that every State has suffered.

If I can turn to the next chart.

Again, this next chart will show just how drastic the open border crisis was during the last 4 years, it is a little clearer. Again, these are the individuals on the terrorist watch list apprehended illegally crossing the open border.

Again, we are talking about the ill effects of these policies. In fiscal year 2017, '18, '19, '20, again, no involvement, and then in '21, '22, '23, and '24, it skyrockets.

Again, all Americans have been put at risk. It is because of these open-border policies, that we continue to mourn the entirely preventable crimes that so many Americans have faced. This, of course, includes the young lady named Laken Riley from Georgia and Rachel Morin from Maryland and many others who died at the hands of illegal immigrants.

As one other statistic, West Virginia, a rural State, loses more than a thousand people every year from fentanyl smuggled across our southern border. Opioid overdoses are the leading cause of death among Americans in every State from 18 to 45.

In Nevada, just those that we know about, human traffickers that are here illegally prey on up to 500 minors shuffling them into sex trafficking.

The statistics are endless. The examples are too numerous. And make no mistake about this, this wide, far-reaching crisis is in my community, it is in your community, and it is in every community around the country.

With an open border and weak law enforcement policies, every incentive imaginable exists for individuals to come to the United States and prey on our people. I saw it firsthand as a prosecutor when I talked to these criminals, when I investigated their crimes. We must face the reality that every incentive exists for criminals around the world to come here to the United States, for organizations to come here to the United States to set up a permanent and entrenched presence. They prey on our people, and they enrich themselves while doing it.

Again, when I was prosecuting these cases, I saw firsthand how criminal illegal immigrants completely disregard our border and disregard our laws. They come here with one intent, to inflict harm on Americans while enriching themselves.

Again, it was no secret what was happening across the Department of Justice. Statistics were overwhelming as it relates to drug overdose deaths, addiction, and the presence of cartels in our communities. Human traffickers and drug cartels clearly saw that the Biden administration was intent on undoing every enforcement mechanism that they had at the border.

President Trump had figured it out. Joe Biden undid it.

Our criminal justice system immediately, State and Federal, became weighed down by the surging crime that accompanied our invasion from illegal immigrants. This crisis burdens not just our communities with public safety issues, as my colleague from Missouri just mentioned, this crisis burdens our healthcare system, and it burdens our public school system. By some estimates, illegal immigrant children account for up to 10 to 15 percent of the public school students in various portions of our country.

By some estimates, it is estimated that we spend up to $150 billion per year at local, State, and Federal levels that are direct payments for illegal immigrants.

Again, there is one study that the Homeland Security Committee did in the 118th Congress that reported that nearly 10 percent of the births covered by Medicaid were children of illegal immigrants.

Now, proponents of illegal immigration and weak borders have for years gaslit Americans into believing that it is inhumane to enforce our borders. Of course, this empty argument is ridiculous and easily rebutted on multiple levels.

For those who have experienced the crime brought to our country from illegal immigration, we have a different perspective. I would submit allowing a criminal illegal alien who was arrested on multiple occasions to be free in our midst and to murder an innocent girl like Laken Riley, that is inhumane.

Surrendering apartment complexes that are filled with hardworking American taxpayers to vicious gangs, that is inhumane.

Allowing hundreds of thousands of Americans to die from one drug that enters into our country through one mechanism, an open southern border, through meticulous schemes of multinational criminal organizations day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and to do nothing about it, that is inhumane.

Allowing millions more to fall into treacherous addiction with wide availability of dangerous drugs flowing across the open border, and again, to do nothing about it, that is inhumane.

We see once mighty centers of American exceptionalism from New York City, Manhattan; Philadelphia, specifically the Kensington neighborhood; or even San Francisco. From East to West and North to South, a tsunami of illegal drugs have hollowed out countless individuals and countless homes, ruining lives, ruining neighborhoods, ruining cities, and ruining States.

What have our leaders done over the last 4 years? Nothing. Instead and insultingly, they have continued to incentivize without check illegal immigration, and they force the taxpayers to foot the bill.

Weak border proponents, including some of my colleagues on the other side of this aisle, expect law enforcement to turn a blind eye to the trafficking of people across our border and around the country. They have played right into the hand of cartels, making their policies and their efforts complicit in the abuse and the atrocities that we all see.

This cycle is not only inhumane, it is as shameful as it is dangerous, and it will destroy our country if we do not fix it and fix it with urgency.

I personally saw firsthand how criminal illegal aliens and the organizations that send them here capitalized on our open-border policies and how flatly wrong many, if not all, of the left's talking points are as they relate to the broader immigrant issue.

The following observations of mine are supported by facts within our national law enforcement communities and, again, through firsthand observations.

First, the left throws out any distinction between legal immigrants and legal immigrant descendants and illegal immigrants and their descendants. There is a very stark contrast between those two camps.

Second, the left claims that immigrants, broadly speaking, only want to come here to the United States for a better life and that they only engage in legal and honest work. Again, that is simply not the case uniformly by any stretch. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who come here repeatedly illegally, again, looking to enrich themselves through illegal activity at the American people's expense.

I investigated and prosecuted dozens of individuals who worked in various sectors, like banking, the auto repair business, the public school system, the agricultural business, shipping enterprises, law enforcement, and countless other outlets. Yes, even law enforcement. Those same people, while they had an honest job, they also engaged in violent crime, Medicaid fraud, and organized retail theft. They engaged in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and/or other types of crime in addition to their ``honest'' work. At times they even used their jobs to better facilitate criminal endeavors.

This type of sophisticated criminal infrastructure is a cancer, and it must be eradicated. Again, we must redirect the terrible policies that enabled this ill in our country.

Lastly, I will say this: The claim that immigrants commit far fewer crimes than native-born Americans, again, this statement is far too broad, and it is easily refuted.

First, as the President's team has stated correctly, every person who enters our country illegally has committed a crime. That is 100 percent across the board. However, secondly, and even more importantly and going directly to the heart of what that claim indicates, one must ask oneself: If we do not know who you are and why you are here, is it likely that you will be successfully investigated and prosecuted?

Of course not. There are hundreds of thousands of people who cross over the border undetected. One must ask themselves hypothetically: Regarding a native-born, local thief, a pickpocket, is it easier to investigate and prosecute him or someone that even our border enforcement authorities, our Federal law enforcement authorities, or local law enforcement have no idea who they are? Of course, the former is easier to convict.

With all that our country has endured, we simply must know who is entering our country and why they are coming here. Thankfully, we have all turned the page. The disastrous policies of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Mr. Mayorkas are being undone with rapid speed.

For a decade, President Trump alone has identified the threat of illegal immigration and how the American taxpayers are being damaged by those who come here to harm us collectively.

We say America First because there is simply no plan B. Flatly speaking, nobody can save us if we do not save ourselves. As my colleagues have stated, so far Republicans have made great progress this cycle. We passed the Laken Riley Act. We passed the Preventing Violence Against Women By Illegal Immigrants Act. President Trump's executive orders have made an immediate difference, but our work is far from over.

We must reverse the incentive structures. We must classify illegal immigrant criminals for what they are, and we must punish them severely. It is a no-brainer, Mr. Speaker. We must protect our borders and, by extension, all American citizens. If we don't, then we run a grave risk of losing our country.

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