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Floor Speech

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Mr. BANKS. Mr. President, on February 3, an illegal immigrant from Kyrgyzstan who was allowed into the United States under Joe Biden in 2023 killed four people on State Road 67 in Indiana--not far from where I live.

He drove a semitruck head-on into a van. That van was carrying a 50- year-old father and two boys who were only 19 and 25 years old, along with a family friend, and they were all from a local Amish community, and now they are all dead.

I am angry about it. I have had enough of it because it is stories like this that show why mass deportations matter and why they are needed now more than ever. At least seven Hoosiers have died on Indiana highways in the past 6 months because of illegal immigrants recklessly driving on our roads and at least eight more have been seriously injured and those are just the cases that I know about.

In November, an illegal immigrant with a fake green card crashed his SUV into a van killing the 76-year-old driver from Decatur--again, not far from Columbia City where I live--before fleeing the scene. The illegal immigrant also seriously injured three innocent drivers in that same crash.

Shortly before that accident, an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk and without a license crashed his car into two young parents who were on their way to pick up their kids from their grandparents' house. The young couple was seriously injured. I have seen images of the wreck, and they are lucky to be alive.

Just a couple of days before that, an illegal immigrant from the country of Georgia was driving a truck and towing a trailer when he swerved abruptly and forced a military Humvee off the road. That crash killed Hoosier National Guardsman Terry Frye and seriously injured three others. Terry was just 23 years old.

In October, an illegal immigrant driving a semitruck killed a 54- year-old man on Highway 20 in Indiana when he failed to stop in traffic. That illegal immigrant had a fake trucking license and opened a trucking company that received a $35,000 loan in taxpayer dollars funded through PPP.

At least seven innocent Hoosiers have died in their own State because of illegal-immigrant drivers. Every single one of these deaths were preventable. Every single one of these deaths happened because someone who shouldn't have been in our country in the first place got behind the wheel and killed American citizens.

Most of the deaths were at the hands of illegal immigrants driving semitrucks. Trucking is an incredibly important industry in my State because Indiana sits at the crossroads of the country. In fact, our State motto is literally ``The Crossroads of America.''

Indiana is the fifth busiest State in the country for commercial traffic freight. Each year, 724 million tons of freight travels through Indiana.

I speak to truckers regularly, and they are outraged by what is happening. One of my friends who works in the trucking industry said many trucking companies are hiring illegal immigrants to drive their trucks because they can pay them less. That takes jobs away from hard- working Americans. They would rather take care of their bottom line than put safe and trustworthy drivers out on the road.

We have to hold those trucking companies accountable for endangering us all. In fact, the truck that killed four Hoosiers last week belonged to a shady trucking company that the industry refers to as a ``chameleon carrier.'' ``Chameleon carriers'' are trucking companies that after being shut down or heavily fined by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, just disguise themselves by changing their name or address or Department of Transportation number to continue operating.

Many of these ``chameleon carriers'' are run by foreign nationals. The Government Accountability Office has said that ``chameleon carriers'' are three times more likely to be involved in serious crashes than legitimate operators.

Not only are illegal immigrants and foreign nationals running illicit trucking companies but Democrat States like California and New York and Pennsylvania are giving out commercial driver's licenses to illegal immigrants like they are Halloween candy.

In fact, 50 percent of CDLs reviewed by the Department of Transportation in New York had been issued improperly.

The driver of the truck that killed Indiana National Guardsman Terry Frye got his CDL from New York after he was waved across the border by the Biden administration in 2022. When police arrived at the scene of the crash, they reported there was a ``language barrier'' and that a translator was needed at the scene.

How could anyone give this guy a CDL to begin with? If he couldn't even talk to police, do we really believe that he could read our road and traffic signs? Do we really think that illegal immigrants who can't even speak English can obey our road rules?

The law doesn't think so. Federal regulations require that commercial truck drivers be proficient in English. Think about how insane this is. You get into the country illegally, you are living in violation of Federal law, but Democrat politicians in blue States violate the law and let you drive an 18-wheeler across State lines.

It is more than just insane. It is dangerous and deadly, and it is this reckless policy that is getting people killed in Indiana. So while Hoosiers are being killed in their own State by illegal immigrants, what are Democrats this week doing in Congress?

They are trying to cut funding to ICE. They are working to prevent illegal immigrants from being taken off of our streets.

We have a Federal Agency whose job it is to enforce immigration law and remove people who are here illegally, but Democrats want to defund that Agency. They want to tie ICE's hands while illegal-immigrant truckers are killing Americans on our highways. This is a deliberate choice to prioritize illegal immigrants over American citizens.

This has to stop, and it has got to stop right now. We need to support President Trump's efforts to deport every illegal immigrant out of this country. We are not doing enough to get them off of our roads as you can see in my State of Indiana.

Every day that we wait, every day that Democrats want to play petty politics, we run the risk of more Americans and more Hoosiers dying on our highways.

ICE needs more resources, not fewer, so that we can get illegal immigrants off of our streets and out of semitrucks driving on our highways. Hoosiers have had enough. I have had enough. It is time that Congress starts acting like American lives were worth protecting.

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