Shooting in Austin, Texas
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend in Austin, Texas, near where I live, we had a tragedy where an individual shot a bunch of Austonians, including several University of Texas students, at a bar on what we call West Sixth Street, in an area that I frequented often when I was in law school, a little less often these days. But it is an area that is a fairly normal place for people to go, not generally perceived as dangerous.
This past Saturday night, early Sunday morning, even as I believe I was returning home from the San Antonio Rodeo, or I had been there, I wake up in the morning to find out that there were three people who had been killed, one of whom was the shooter, and then later a fourth person would die, a third victim.
It was an unnecessary, senseless act. It is compounded by not just normal violence, but why this individual was here in the first place.
I think we have got to wrestle with some serious questions about who we allow into this country and why. The individual who killed these students--by the way, there were multiple others who were shot having surgeries. One young woman, a young student, was shot multiple times in her abdomen, and another young man who was shot in his head. It was not just the three dead victims. Other people were hurt. Other people were traumatized by it.
The individual who did it was wearing a ``Property of Allah'' sweatshirt, had a Koran in the back seat of the car that he had traveled in, was wearing an Iranian flag T-shirt under the ``Property of Allah'' sweatshirt.
What we know about him is that he came here from Senegal in 2000, overstayed his visa.
In 2006, he obtains LPR, or legal permanent residency status, under the Bush administration--I am going to be an equal opportunity basher of administrations who have failed to secure our border properly--and did so on the back of supposedly a marriage to an American citizen.
Fast forward to 2012, under Obama, he gets full citizenship, which Obama was handing out like candy, and then tries to get LPR status for two additional women, allegedly women he was marrying. I don't know whether in succession or at the same time. All I know is he was trying to do that.
Fast forward, he was arrested for a hit-and-run alleged in 2022.
My fundamental question is: Why are we importing people who are deeply at odds with the values of our country and Western civilization? Why are we doing that? Why have we done that exponentially in the wake of the attacks of 9/11/2001?
It doesn't make any sense. This is avoidable. This man didn't need to be in the United States who does not share our values and clearly was interested in serving his convictions for Iran and radical Islamism more than his commitment to this country, peace, and our rule of law.
I am going to have more to say about that, but related to this topic, I am proud to be the cofounder, alongside my friend and fellow Texan, Keith Self, a veteran, a great public servant, longtime public servant, a great friend, who shares my conviction--I won't speak for him, but shares my conviction for ensuring we defend our values, our Western civilization, the rule of law in our country; that we stand up against the Islamist movement, putting sharia law forward in direct conflict with our laws.
I know my friend has a limited time, so I would like to yield some time to him to speak on this subject that concerns us both so greatly.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend who has very well laid out the extraordinary problem we have as a country if we allow sharia law to take root. People say, well, yeah, just dismiss it. It is not a big deal. This is just a problem in Europe. You hear that all the time. Is that right?
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, the fact is that it is a real problem here. It is not just Dearborn, Michigan, where some people get some headlines. It is not just New York City, where you now have Mayor Mamdani and prayer calls in the middle of Manhattan. We have--and I will let the gentleman expand upon it--300-plus mosques, and more mosques being built every year in the State of Texas than any other State in the Union.
We have EPIC City, which you can comment about, in your own backyard. We have a massive Islamic center in Houston, a massive Islamic center north of Austin, and an Islamic center in West Campus.
You say: Chip, why is that a problem?
People can believe what they want to believe. They can build these things.
These entities are expressly putting out and advancing Islamism consistent with the plan laid out by the Muslim Brotherhood in accordance with some 600 organizations designed to do it, to put a footprint here that is ideological and political and designed to take over our country.
Would the gentleman agree?
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Mr. ROY. Is the gentleman familiar with areas in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, even nearby his own district in places like Richardson, in places like Arlington, and a little farther away in other areas, that some of our Texas women in particular, and generally, believe to be no-go zones? There are areas where they are increasingly feeling uncomfortable as if they are somehow immersed in the Middle East, in areas that do not share our values of equality, of treating people respectfully the same as peers, and where some of our women feel uncomfortable?
Is the gentleman familiar that that is the case, in fact, in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, from what we understand?
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Mr. ROY. One last point, because I get it thrown in my face quite frequently that our Founders would be appalled that we are raising these issues and questioning people's ability to carry out and practice their faith.
I know that the gentleman is a student of our history and the Constitution, and he is a student of military history. I am confident that he is well apprised of the engagement that Thomas Jefferson had with respect to the Barbary pirates and the Barbary wars.
When posed with the question that Jefferson posed: Well, why do you make war with us?
The response was, as the gentleman knows: Well, we are commanded to in the Koran.
To which Jefferson was fairly appalled, as you would expect him to be, Mr. Speaker. We had to carry out wars to make sure our shipping lanes were open and so forth.
I know the gentleman, who is a student of history, understands that that conflict was very clear and present even among our leaders as they were founding this Nation and the enlightenment that led to the First Amendment which we cherish, but the recognition of the direct conflict that the Islamic faith had, especially with respect to sharia law being carried out against our values and Western civilization?
Does the gentleman agree?
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has to go to another engagement. I thank him for his leadership in working with me and cofounding the Sharia-Free America Caucus.
Do we now have 46?
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Mr. ROY. We have 46 strong and growing.
I would invite colleagues on either side of the aisle to join. We should all be united in having a sharia-free America. It is inconsistent with our values.
I appreciate his leadership, I appreciate his public service, I appreciate his friendship, and I wish him well this evening.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would just note that in addition to what we just talked about, there is this view that Europe is unique. Right now there are some 50 million Muslims who have now moved into Europe.
We now have got France approaching 10 percent of its population. We have the United Kingdom at 7 percent-plus of its population. In the United Kingdom we have 85 courts carrying out sharia law alongside the civilian courts. In Germany they have 7 to 8 percent of the population. Spain and Italy, and a good chunk of Western Europe, is now approaching 10 percent-plus Muslim.
The question now is: As we are having a battle with Iran to take out their nuclear capability, at what point are we going to be concerned about a nuclear France or a nuclear United Kingdom?
People say: Well, Chip, that is awfully controversial.
Is it? Is it really that controversial?
We have majority Muslim countries that are refusing to send their kids to schools in the United Kingdom because they believe that the schools there are teaching a radicalized Islam that is more radical than they have at home.
This is purposeful. This is being driven by the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not just happening in Europe. It is happening here, and but for an ocean, we would be Europe now. However, after the massively open borders under the Biden-Mayorkas regime, with the increasing shrinking of the globe, and with totally irresponsible wide-open borders and totally irresponsible ``legal'' immigration policies by this country, we are importing people who hate us and hate our values.
Why would we do that?
Someone explain to me why we would do that.
In the 25 years since 9/11 we have imported millions of people from countries that are diametrically opposed to our values.
Why? Why would we do that, and why would we continue?
I don't care what it is. I don't care if it is H-1B, and I don't care if it is tourist visas that people tend to overstay and we never enforce. We have massive and rampant abuse of our so-called legal immigration system, and I am sick and tired of hearing colleagues and, frankly, the administration, Republicans, generally Governors, who say: Oh, we love legal immigration. You just have to stop the illegal immigration.
Of course, we should stop the illegal immigration. It is the basic duty of government.
However, why would you continue massive, widespread legal immigration from countries that very heavily and largely oppose our way of life and want to transform it?
They do not wish to melt into the pot. They wish to take over the country and change it.
Stop doing that. This is common sense. But common sense was thrown out the window years ago.
Everybody lives in this touchy-feely nonsense bull that they were taught in school to say: Well, you know, you just have to open your doors to everybody. Have your porch open and have everybody come in.
Hold on.
Why would you let people in who want to undo what you have?
We have to have people who wish to come here to achieve the American Dream, who want to learn our language, conform with our laws and our society, conform with our customs, conform with our heritage, celebrate and venerate our heritage, support In God We Trust, and accept our values.
We have Moses sitting right here overlooking the House Chamber. I am guessing that ``Mr. Property of Allah'' here, who shot up people in my town and killed students from the University of Texas and the Texas Tech student, would not be too excited about Moses overseeing our Chamber.
Look, we have to make choices. We have 53 million-ish people foreign born in the United States, almost 16 percent. It is the highest percentage of our population in history. In the 1920s--in 1924 specifically--Congress restricted immigration after a massive explosion of immigration in the late 1800s, early 1900s.
Now, let's also consider at the time that while there were differences in cultures--German, Czech, Italian, whatever-- predominantly, these were people who shared Western civilization values. They believed in our country, were going to schools that taught that our country was great, were going to schools that taught the Constitution, were going to schools that taught kids English.
At the time, we were trying to build a melting pot. Yet, even with that, we all recognized, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe we need to pause immigration because we have had so many people come here, we need a little resettling to ensure that everybody here knows what being an American means.
For the better part of 40 years, we pretty much flatlined immigration, constrained it to negligible numbers. By the way, during that period, we ultimately were able to win a world war, ultimately have the baby boom post-World War II, and grew the economy.
Then sometime in the mid-1960s, we opened up the spigot, and we set forward now a 60-year march that has been a massive curve that has now exploded into the 21st century in which we have brought masses of population into our country, but now increasingly people who flatout do not share our values, and, worse, wish to eradicate our values and kill us.
Again, to my colleagues who like to yap on the House floor or on news media about how great legal immigration is, is this great? Is it?
Now, I want to say that I am not just making these numbers up. Since 2002, which astute observers of history will recognize was the year after 9/11, where 3,000 Americans were murdered by people who overstayed their visas, I would remind, all the friendly, oh, come join us melting pot folks who came over here on tourist visas that overstayed their visas and then flew airplanes into buildings.
Since then, the United States has issued 4.6 million green cards or lawful permanent status to nationals from Muslim-majority nations, allowing them to remain here indefinitely.
Now, I am sure there are some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that will come down and say: Well, Chip, that is a good thing. Isn't that great, having people come here, diversity?
Well, is it?
There has been a 48 percent increase in green cards to these countries from 2002 to 2023 since 9/11: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
I am doing that for the benefit of the stenographer.
Meanwhile, sharia is exploding. They say no, it is not. Yes, it is. We have story after story of how that is being meted out in communities around our country, not always formally, but certainly in the communities in direct contradiction to our Western values and our law.
We have actually had courts being propped up. For example, Governor Abbott in Texas had to go quash two courts that were being set up in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which is why I am saying we should pause immigration.
I introduced legislation in November to do that. Let's just pause all immigration. We can allow tourist visas so long as we enforce visa overstays, but we shouldn't reopen the spigots on immigration until we have revamped our badly broken H-1B system, until we have revamped the entire visa system, until we vet people for sharia law or adherence to values inconsistent with ours, until we fix Plyler v. Doe, a wrongheaded Supreme Court opinion saying that we have to allow illegal aliens to be able to get educated here, until we fix our broken immigration system, which the next Democratic regime will exploit, as Secretary Noem testified to yesterday in the House committee, that that would assuredly occur if we do not codify changes to asylum, codify changes to parole, codify changes to catch and release, that it will happen, and we haven't done it.
By the way, the House hasn't even passed it this Congress. Why? Why haven't we passed it and sent it over to the Senate? Well, the Senate won't pass it. Well, we are hearing that about the SAVE America Act, too, right now, but why don't we just put more pressure on the Senate to do its job? Show up to work. Debate in the supposedly greatest deliberative body in the world in which they never actually deliberate.
When was the last time somebody saw a great speech on the floor of the Senate between two Senators, engaging in debate? The greatest deliberative body in the world? There is more deliberation in an average high school debate than the United States Senate.
I have offended a few Senators apparently by virtue of what a couple people said when I called it the nursing home and the Jell-O dispensary.
Well, forgive me. Not. Because you don't do anything. The Senate is nothing more in today's operation than the personnel office for the White House. That is it. By the way, it is not even doing that fully effectively.
Why haven't we passed the SAVE America Act in the Senate? Well, Chip, we don't have 60 votes. Does anybody know how the filibuster and the rules of the Senate actually work? Sixty votes is one mechanism for shutting off debate, but you actually have to have debate to turn off. Have the debate. Put it on the floor.
Oh, but they might offer amendments, and those amendments might be really tough votes for our Members. Well, hell's bells, you might have to vote on something in the United States Senate? Who could imagine the horror of running for office to become a vaunted United States Senator, and yet, oh, no, I might be forced to vote on something?
Heaven forbid that the United States Senate Republicans lock together, lock arms, have a strategy, and say, hey, why don't we just table all the amendments.
I serve on the Rules Committee here in the House. We get amendments every week, gamesmanship by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They offer amendments to put us in a bad position, to run ads against us that we are somehow the Devil because we voted against puppies and children and whatever it is. Boo-hoo. Vote no, move on, put a message out, but the Senate won't do it because they are hiding.
The United States Senate is hiding behind a fake filibuster, a fake 60-vote threshold that is not real.
Put a bill on the floor of the Senate, allow it to be amended. Table the amendments, allow the speeches to go, make them sit there and speak, make them burn the clock, make them sit there for weeks on end, telling the American people how they oppose that only American citizens should vote in American elections, and that we should have voter ID to demonstrate you are who you are when you vote. Go sell that at home.
However, the Senate continues to hide, say we can't do that. We don't have 51 Senators. We don't want to upset the filibuster.
Chip, you are going to risk the filibuster. False. Fake news. We are saying use the real filibuster. Speak. Invite Mr. Smith to come back to Washington. Allow Mr. Smith to come into the Chamber and show you what a real filibuster is because it isn't keeping the Senate in a quorum call while you go to fundraisers and State dinners or go parade in front of the screens on the committees, come down to the Senate floor, have a few votes, and then fly back out after 2\1/2\ days of work in a week.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was on the floor of the Senate for 3 months, 3 months. They were 25 votes shy of the then-cloture vote to shut off debate.
Right now, we are--I don't know--10 votes shy. Put it on the floor and see what happens. Let's see how many phone calls come into Senators' offices. After a week, after 2 weeks, after 3 weeks, you could pull it off the floor if you have got to move something important like DHS funding if Democrats stop blocking the funding of Coast Guard, FEMA, TSA. This is not rocket science stuff, y'all, but the Senate refuses to fight.
The American people demand that we actually preserve the integrity of our elections. The American people believe that only American citizens should vote in American elections. They believe you should have voter ID. The Senate should act. The House should codify President Trump's executive orders, send them to the Senate, and then the Senate can do another talking filibuster.
Mr. Speaker, they might have to show up on the Senate floor and force work. All of these things are related: wide-open borders, crime rates, organizations that are funding it, the advance of sharia law and the Islamist movement in the United States. All of it is tied to large networks of Marxists and Islamists that are trying to remake the United States of America and undermine everything about our history, heritage, our rule of law, the Constitution, the Declaration.
The question is: Are we going to continue to remain asleep, kowtowing to corporate America, telling everybody what to do for labor, earnings per share, and the bottom line so they can get better reports from Wall Street? Because that is what is happening.
You turn the management of affairs over to corporations, corporations that continue to buy up land, buy up ranches, buy up farms, often international corporations, almost often foreigners buying up American assets. Are we that slave to corporate America that we are willing to leave our doors wide open to the most dangerous individuals around that do not share our values?
A lot of people think that the sharia crisis is only in Europe and in foreign countries, and that it has not yet arrived here. That is false. It is alive, well, and growing. People are going to use the First Amendments incorrectly to hang us with it. They are going to pile weight upon the bow that is our system and it will crumble under its own weight while we fiddle while America burns because we don't want to say uncomfortable things that we can all see with our own eyes.
Why do you have to wait in line at the airport? Why can't you take a pocketknife in your pocket on the plane like we did for years? Why do you have to take your freaking shoes off? Was it because of some nice, Christian choir boys and girls from the local church in your community, or was it because of the rise of the Islamist movement around the world? Was it from the Pan Am bombings and all the various terrorist attacks of the 1980s and 1990s culminating in 2001 on 9/11?
Open your eyes and see what the world is. Recognize the enemy before you and stop inviting the enemy into your home, and then allowing your own rules to be used to promulgate your own destruction.
It is a radical, political ideology that is at odds with the Constitution, the Declaration, and the rule of law. We should act like it. We should tighten down our immigration laws. We should pause immigration. We should vet people for adherence to sharia law. We should ensure that our communities stay safe and recognize the war that is being waged against us and take action.
Mr. Speaker, I recognize that my good friend from Arizona is in the Chamber and is no doubt going to regale us with a tutorial on our debt crisis, the extent to which interest payments on the debt, the skyrocketing mountain of debt that is piling up as a result of mandatory spending, in particular, demographic changes, our lack of use of great medical technology, and other things that will allow us to save money and have a much better healthcare system and save our children from the scourge of debt and interest payments that I talked about.
Mr. Speaker, I suspect he will say something to those effects, and I think I have filibustered long enough.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, can I say something and then I will turn it over to him because I have to go, but the gentleman and I poke each other and have a little fun. I am certainly prone to giving some speeches on immigration, board of security, and other things to come down to the floor. I think the floor should be used. I wish we had actual, real debate. I wish we had something other than Special Orders where you come down here and talk to an empty Chamber.
I think we should have 10, 20, or 30 of us down here for hours at a time debating serious issues. I think the American people would expect that. That is why I think the Senate ought to actually advance to debate. Don't be afraid of a real filibuster, but I will say as a compliment that the gentleman has done this for now over a decade. I can't remember how long he has been in Congress where he has been down to the floor and he gives those speeches. I don't mean that as a criticism because that message has been consistent.
By the way, the big, beautiful bill last year was nothing like I know what he wanted or I wanted. I wanted to go much further, but what we did get in terms of Medicaid reforms, what we did get in terms of spending reductions, $1.6 trillion in reductions and so forth, again, not what we wanted, would never have happened but for the groundwork being laid by people like my friend from Arizona, the speeches he gives on the floor regularly making the case for how debt, interest, and so forth is killing our country.
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Mr. ROY. I am on Judiciary, Budget, and Rules.
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Mr. ROY. I see it all.
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Mr. ROY. Well, you do a great job of it. Keep pounding on the math. We have made slight progress with flat discretionary spending for 2 or 3 years and a little bit of work last year in the big, beautiful bill, but we barely dented the problem.
Mr. Speaker, the iceberg sits in front of us. We are on the Titanic. A few of us are pulling the wheel, but, hell, people on both sides of the aisle are pulling the wheel the other direction. Our kids and grandkids depend on us actually avoiding the frigging iceberg.
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