Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, ICE agents are being paid. Border Patrol agents are being paid. The representation to the American people that somehow we have shut down the agents of ICE is not true. You can correct me if I am wrong, but that is what I am told.

The weeping and gnashing of teeth that I hear from some of my colleagues--Republicans can fund right now through a unanimous consent all the people who they are lamenting are not being paid. You have it in your power, or the Speaker has it in his power, to agree to a unanimous consent to pass the gentlewoman's bill.

Everybody that you are wringing your hands about--not you, sir. Mr. Speaker, I speak to you. The hands that are being wrung are totally without merit. We will vote for--and by the way, we did not vote for the Department of Homeland Security on our side. There were seven of us. The rest of us voted ``no'' because we didn't agree with what the Department of Homeland Security and ICE were doing--not TSA, not Coast Guard, not the other agencies, but ICE and CBP. We don't agree with what they are doing.

What you are doing, Mr. Speaker, on that side of the aisle is to hold everybody else hostage for a bill that we did not vote for. Stop saying we made some deal. Our deal was to separate it out, and we were against it. That was the deal. That is what I did. I voted for all the rest of the bills, as my side did, and I voted against the Department of Homeland Security because we want what they are doing stopped to protect the American people.

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Mr. HOYER. I say to my friends who keep wringing their hands like Pontius Pilate that somebody is not paying them, the people who are not paying everybody other than CBP and ICE, who are being paid out of a huge fund that they have available to them, are the people that you will not let go.

We are for funding everybody but the two agencies we have mentioned and have a difference of opinion on. Pontius Pilate could not rid himself of the responsibility.

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