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Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I ask for unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 156, H.R. 4553; I ask that the substitute amendment, No. 4353, be considered and agreed to; the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, this is the DHS bill that would fund all the things that are in the DHS bill that the Democrats negotiated until they pulled the rug out from underneath that negotiation to politically grandstand on the Senate floor now for nearly a month.
The truth of the matter is that--I want to make the point for those who care about the way the Senate operates. First of all, we didn't have any appropriations bills the first 2 years. The majority party has now put appropriations bills on. There have been 11 out of 12.
I was told that policy debates are not to enter the discussion on appropriations bills because things like this can happen.
To my Democrat colleagues: If you have a bill that you want to defund ICE with, put it on the floor. I guarantee it will get voted down because it is an extremely unpopular position.
We are not going to let you get to that result by way of holding everyone else hostage.
If you want to support all the Agencies in this negotiated bill, you have a way to do it. But I think we really know what this is about. What this is really about is the Democrats lost an election where the issue of border enforcement and deportations were on the table, front and center in front of the voters, and the voters supported it. Recent polling still shows that.
But to satisfy their radicalized base--which are the same people, these leftist NGOs that conjure and foment discontent, blow whistles, try to create confrontations with ICE agents--won't let them do it, and they are kind of stuck.
So the only thing they have left now is the same playbook they ran a couple of months ago by shutting down the government, but this time they are shutting down DHS.
And to make that clear, Joe Biden and the Democrats let 15 million people in here illegally, tens of thousands of murderers, hundreds of thousands of violent criminals, and now that same party wants to defund the Agency that is charged with deporting these monsters.
So we have a choice. I choose to support law enforcement. I am not going to go along with the idea that we are going to give the Democrats the ability to kneecap ICE so they can get amnesty by lack of enforcement.
And with that, Mr. President, I renew my motion.
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Mr. SCHMITT. If he has already objected, the objection has been heard.
My colleague from Connecticut just talked about this minutes ago. Minutes ago, the very same Senator objected to Coast Guard funding. So here we are again with political gamesmanship and grandstanding for some clip to show that you actually want to fund the Coast Guard. Meanwhile, you just voted against the Coast Guard.
The Democrats do not want to fund the Coast Guard because they are so hell-bent on defunding ICE.
And the term ``out of control'' was used. Do you know what is out of control? The language being used on this floor to describe Federal law enforcement--Nazis, the Gestapo. This is very dangerous. This is very dangerous.
And I will tell you that I have great appreciation for the men and women who go into very dangerous situations to deport criminals who want to rape and murder our fellow citizens. I appreciate them.
So five reasons why I cannot go along with this scam: Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Kayla Hamilton, Dacara Thompson, and Hallie Helgeson--all Americans--all murdered by illegal aliens released by Democrats, instead of being deported.
So what else is out of control other than the Democrats' language? These leftist activist organizations that are creating the chaos in the streets.
There are nine sanctuary jurisdictions in this country that, actually, probably are significant. In those nine sanctuary jurisdictions, there is a 590-percent increase for anti-ICE attacks.
They are creating conditions with the hope that they get some viral moment. This is dangerous. This is out of control.
One more thing that is out of control: sanctuary jurisdictions at large.
And for the friends watching at home, what is a sanctuary jurisdiction that the Democrats are so proud of? They are local jurisdictions that will not tell Federal law enforcement when an illegal alien rapist or murderer is being released from prison.
It happened--by the way, the new Virginia Governor just pledged that she won't do it.
The monster Abdul Jalloh, from Sierra Leone, with 30 priors, who stabbed to death a fellow citizen of ours--she has pledged to not let ICE know when that monster is released from prison.
That is who they are. That is what we are fighting against, and we are not going to allow them to kneecap our Federal law enforcement from getting these monsters out of our country.
They just voted against this. They just voted against the Coast Guard. They just voted against the Secret Service. They just voted against TSA.
They want to undermine law enforcement and give blanket amnesty to 15 million people here illegally. That is the truth.
And with that,
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