Date: 2014-07-30
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. over the last couple of weeks. many of us have visited my home State and have gone to places where I have gone over the decades of service and living in Texas. and that is to our great neighbors who live on the border. Many great citizens of the State of Texas and of the great country in which we live. they have lived and worked and played. and they have created an economic engine. cities like Brownsville. Laredo. Harlingen. McAllen. and many others. And they have. in fact. experienced over the years an influx of individuals coming to do harm. As a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee and a member who has served as chairwoman and ranking member on a number of subcommittees. we have made great strides. I am reminded of the low number of Border Patrol agents some many years ago. and now we are upwards to 25.000 hardworking Americans who serve on both the northern and southern borders. They have met the challenge of a serious influx. First. the drug cartels. The violence on the Mexican side of the border. We have come together with Mexican Presidents and have worked with the Mexican national defense forces. and we have quashed. to a certain extent. the extensive violence. But yet. our Federal agents of the ATF. the DEA. FBI. and certainly other collaborative efforts have worked to bring this violence down. We take note of the fact that El Paso is noted as the safest city in the United States. and it is on the border. We note that a great deal of commerce comes through the southern border. as it does the northern border. Over the last couple of weeks. beginning maybe in 2013. we saw a new phenomenon. an unplanned phenomenon. a phenomenon driven by the devastating and destructive elements found in Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. and Central America. none of which were driven by a pointed pronouncement from the United States or the President of the United States. President Barack Obama. But elements who wanted to misuse and abuse the need for comprehensive immigration reform decided to misrepresent the laws of the United States of America. Every Member of Congress has adhered to a particular theme. I started using it in the 1990s. We are a Nation of laws and a Nation of immigrants. And the laws are intended to be used to instruct how we guide our hearts and our laws. We still have the Statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York that says. we welcome the forlorn and those who are in need. Unfortunately. bad information was given to desperate people. Let me say that again. Mr. Speaker: desperate people. Desperate mothers and fathers who saw the beheading of young people. or people in their neighborhood threatened by MS13 and other horrific gangs who say. if your child does not join. your child will be killed. or your little girl will be raped. Or maybe the 3yearold that I saw down in Brownsville with a diaper on was given to someone just to save her life. That is the misnomer and the abuse that has been going on in the debate here. These are the real lives of children who fled with a more than credible fear of the loss of life. I am so disappointed sometimes in how we can reinvent truth. and that is that these children are fleeing because of what President Obama represented. That is not true. And it is important to tell the American people the truth. They were fleeing because of the sheer unbelievable violence. insane violence. mixed in with the mistruths and misrepresentations of those who just wanted to make money and abuse the system. So now we have the surge. maybe 50.000 plus here in the United States. And we have to do something about it. I listened to three young people yesterday. Most of us have not heard from the children because we were protecting the childrens privacy. But these youngsters explained the arduous journey that they took and how they came here for nothing more than a better life. and that violence was all around them. Yes. we need to work with Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador. But we started out trying to do what was right. The President offered a supplemental. He knew it was right to have funding for the wilderness funding. He knew it was right to give the Border Patrol agents their appropriate moneys. and he knew it was right for enforcement to add more judges. But what I would say is. what we have on the floor now. Mr. Speaker. is a pitiful example in H.R. 5230. This is a bad emergency supplemental. It is not even that. It is not worth voting for. America is better than this. and we need to do better than this with the supplemental to help these children and help America.