Andy Biggs

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert).

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves).

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire about the time remaining.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to debate here about this. Let me tell you something, Mr. Speaker, I believe that, by far, most Americans would agree with the proposition that those illegally in the United States and noncitizens should not be counted for purposes of creating or modifying congressional legislative districts. That is probably what they think, and that is exactly what section 3 of this bill leads to. Foreign nationals here legally who have not naturalized and cannot vote in Federal elections, together with illegal aliens who cannot vote in Federal elections, comprise a substantial portion of our population, by some accounts in excess of 15 percent of our populations. Noncitizens are not evenly distributed among the States, and some States end up with greater representation in Congress based on a higher concentration of noncitizens. Perhaps that is what one New York Congresswoman meant when, in response to a question regarding illegal aliens, she said: ``I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.'' The provision of this bill would ensure a fair apportionment based on equal representation of citizens. Now, my colleague has relied on Evenwel v. Abbott, a case that they relied on wrongfully. Their reliance is totally misplaced. First of all, they are dealing with State apportionment issues in Evenwel, not Federal, but State. Let's go ahead, and let's see what Justice Ginsburg did. She cited with approval the district court holding in Evenwel that the Supreme Court allows jurisdictions to use any neutral, nondiscriminatory baseline, including total population, when drawing State and local legislative districts. That has never been overturned, nor did Justice Ginsburg overturn it in Evenwel. In Evenwel, the plaintiffs that came before the Court wanted apportionment based on the citizen voting age population. That is what they were asking for. Although Evenwel deals with State and local apportionment, we can fairly extrapolate that rationale to Federal apportionment, as well. Justice Ginsburg's holding in Evenwel turns on the idea that voter equality in a district is not required. It is not required. However, she also lays out that neither is it the total population metric that is implied by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That is not required either. For instance, Justice Ginsburg referred to Burns v. Richardson. In that case, it held that districts may be apportioned on the basis of registered voters or voter-eligible populations, that that is permissible. In the Burns case, they give the example of Hawaii, which could rationally justify its use of voter-eligible apportionment because of the large number of transients and military personnel it had. The Burns court noted that apportioning using registered voters was permissible because of the conditions in which Hawaii found itself. Now, what has happened since then? What has happened since then is this administration will admit that 9.2 million illegal aliens have come in under their control. They will also admit that there is another 1.8 million known got-aways. That is 11 million people that the administration will admit to have come in, in 3\1/2\ years. It has distorted the population. It skewed the one-person, one-vote standard, which is the canon upon which the commerce case was founded. It is the one-person, one-vote rule. Our colleagues on the other side don't want to acknowledge that there is a constitutional basis, as I have just cited, to allow section 3 to go forward, but Democrats are perfectly content with California, which is a sanctuary State, hauling in people. The minority is perfectly content with New York bringing in people through sanctuary policies, or Illinois. That skews exactly what the Founders intended to make straight and clear. Let's go to the 14th Amendment for just one second to actually read the second part of the 14th Amendment, or get to that. I am not going to read it. The first clause, that is what my colleague across the aisle, Mr. Speaker, has relied on exclusively, but he didn't bother to tell you about the second clause. In the second clause itself, it deals with every Federal election and every State election for State Governor, judicial body, and State legislatures. What they do there in the second clause of the 14th Amendment is provide a way to reduce apportionment when those individuals may be disqualified. Mr. Speaker, that is what we are saying here. That is why this bill needs to pass, and I urge a passage. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I will say this about the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), that he is right on some points, but he is wrong on some points, as well. One of them is this: This bill gives money to the States to deal with the calamity that has been caused by the Biden administration. Mr. Speaker, years ago, Janet Napolitano, who was in the Biden administration in the same position that Secretary Mayorkas is in, demanded that the Federal Government pay for the damages caused by illegal migration at that time. She understood. Just like Katie Hobbs, who is the current Democratic Governor of Arizona, says, we have to have resources. Please understand that you don't understand what is going on on the border. I will say one thing, that my friend from New York is correct that this is a show vote. H.R. 2 has been sitting in the Senate. It should have passed. It would have taken care of 90 percent of the problems on the border. I know. I wrote most of those provisions, along with my friend, Chip Roy. I will tell you this: If we do not pass this, don't come to us if you are living in New York and say you are in trouble because you have perpetuated it. Mr. Speaker, this is the time to pass this piece of legislation. The process has been crappy, but this is the time to pass this legislation because it has to be done.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, to hear the administration tell it, having to get a warrant is the end of the world. Well, guess what? In literally any other context in which law enforcement or intelligence agencies want to read an American's communications, they have to get a warrant. That has been the rule for over 200 years, and for 46 years the government has had to get a FISA title I order to read Americans' communications in a foreign intelligence investigation. These are investigations in which Americans are suspected of terrorism, espionage, cybercrimes--you name it. Somehow, a warrant or title I requirement is completely consistent with national security in those high-stakes cases, yet the administration and those who are opposed to this amendment allege it will plunge us into a dystopian nightmare if we apply this same basic longstanding protection to section 702 queries where the American often isn't even suspected of any wrongdoing at the time of the query. I don't buy it, and neither should you. Over a decade ago, as my friend Mr. Nadler said just a moment ago, a group of intelligence experts unanimously recommended requiring a warrant for U.S. person queries of section 702 data. That group included Michael Morell, former Acting Director of the CIA, and Richard A. Clarke, former Chief Counterterrorism Adviser to President George W. Bush--bipartisan--recommended the same thing that we have today. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), the cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, so let's just consider that the Second Circuit has said that a Fourth Amendment warrant is appropriate, and they haven't finished concluding it. I don't know why Mr. Himes is going to just keep riding off on that, but the Second Circuit is still considering that. Let's take a look at something else. The U.S. person queries designed to search for communications between Americans and foreigners who happen to be U.S. person targets. That is what we are hearing. So Mr. Turner says the law already requires a warrant to surveil an American. When he says ``surveil'' what he is talking about is collecting all of an American's communications. In that case, under title I a warrant is required. A U.S. person query is an attempt to access some of an American's communications, namely, those that are incidentally collected under section 702 and to do so without a warrant. They can do it right now without a warrant. That is the distinction that we are getting at. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I want to just dovetail on that because my friend from the Intelligence Committee keeps talking about us not being able to look at Hamas or any of these nefarious actors. That is simply inaccurate. The administration cites multiple examples where using section 702 to monitor foreign targets has provided critical intelligence, but when it comes to warrantless searches for Americans, they can't provide any examples of where they have provided any useful information. Yet, they want to continue to look at U.S. persons' information without a warrant. Mr. Chair, I urge support of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chair, like all the amendments offered by HPSCI, this amendment drastically expands the scope of FISA. This amendment will actually change the definition of ``electronic communication service provider'' to require a whole new class of businesses and other entities to assist in FISA section 702 surveillance. When the amendment first came out 1\1/2\ months ago, it caused a massive commotion, as can be imagined. One of the FISA amici did something highly unusual. He went public with a warning. He confirmed that the amendment originally was exactly as broad as it looked, in that it could force hotels, libraries, and coffee shops to serve as surrogate spies because, of course, customers in those establishments might well be engaging in international communications, which would transit over the WiFi equipment in those locations. That was the original. Therefore, the amendment sponsors threw in an exemption for hotels, libraries, coffee shops and a handful of other establishments, but that hardly solves the problem because the vast majority of U.S. businesses are not exempted. Hence, the amendment would still apply to grocery stores, department stores, hardware stores, barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, nail salons. Perhaps most worrisome of all, it would apply to business landlords who rent out office space and provide WiFi for their building. That would include the offices that many of us in this room go to when we are back in our districts, as well as the offices of tens of millions of Americans across the country, offices for lawyers, journalists, nonprofits, and others. That is how expansive this amendment is. That is why we should defeat this amendment. Mr. Chair, I have enjoyed all the attention the Biggs-Jayapal-Jordan- Nadler-Davidson-Lofgren amendment has received. It has been flattering that, on every other amendment and the underlying bill, we don't talk about any of that other stuff, and we talk about the warrants. That gets to the reality of the situation. The intelligence community wants control. They want to continue to have control without any checks. The Biggs amendment does not require a warrant for the government to surveil foreigners in foreign countries or to incidentally collect the communication of Americans under section 702. Let me repeat that. The amendment does not require a warrant for the government to surveil foreigners in foreign countries, nor does it require a warrant for incidentally collecting the communications of Americans under section 702. It just doesn't, but that is what was heard. Instead, it requires that the Federal Government and the spying and surveillance apparatus get a warrant if they want to read an American's communications or query them in the 702 database. That is what the essence of this is. They don't want to have to get a warrant. They are okay with getting a warrant under title I of FISA, but not under 702 for some reason. It is very odd. Additionally, not only do they not want to get a warrant, but they want to expand the database and the scope of the Americans that they can scoop up in that database to include, in this particular amendment, virtually every retail outlet in the country, virtually every commercial enterprise in the country, virtually every commercial property in this country, but we don't want to have a warrant if we are going to look into U.S. persons' information. We don't want to do that. After all, that might cause them to actually develop information and investigate further. Let me tell you something. This underlying bill loses its quality if the Biggs amendment on the warrant amendment doesn't pass. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Let me tell you what bothers me. So we know that there is a severe problem with the apparatus of the Federal police state abusing FISA, both section 702 and title I, to use those authorities to surveil and search Americans' private data. I want nothing more than to put every Member of this body on the record. Do you support the warrant protections granted under the Fourth Amendment to your constituency? I want everyone on the record on that. In order to get there, we put at risk this bigger, broader problem because the other amendments made in order will expand that authority before we know we can even curb the authority. So you are creating another bucket for which you are exposing American citizens--innocent American citizens, 19,000 donors to a political campaign. Don't tell me that all those 19,000 people were in contact with Hamas. They weren't. The system was abused. That is why we need the warrant requirement. That is why we need the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, but we are not even going to be able to consider that. What I am telling you is we have a conundrum, as my friend from Texas has said, of the Speaker saying we are going to brief you on what NSA, CIA, FBI says, but we are not going to bring in anybody to counter what they say. And we are going to do it in a SCIF so you can't tell the American people. Well, what I want is: I want accountability. I want accountability to myself and everybody else in this body. That is why I am leaning towards voting for this. On the other hand, the real question is: Are we going to go ahead and expand the authorities of the Federal police state just because we want a vote?

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) said that in this bill they were able to successfully reject Republicans' request for spending reductions and rejected Republicans' request for riders. Yet, somehow, the Republicans are going to vote for that. That is outrageous. She is right, though. She got the spending. She killed the riders. When I hear that a vote against this is a vote for China, what we really are saying is a vote for this is a vote for Chinese terrorism because we have had over 30,000 illegal aliens from China come across the border with this border policy. What you are going to get is you are voting actually to speed up the process of redistribution of illegal aliens that come in because that is what the funding is going to go for. You are talking about beds? Those beds are going to go empty. Why? Because you are going to ship these people out as soon as they get here. That is what is happening within 24 hours. So the crimes, the fentanyl death, the terrorist initiatives that are coming our way, you vote for this, you are funding it, you own it.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is my pleasure to join him in this Special Order to talk about one of the most important existential crises that we face in the country today, and that is our border crisis. Let's rephrase that. It is the Biden border crisis. So we have 9 sectors along the southwest border, each one 100 to 150 miles wide and they cover many tens of thousands of miles into the interior. The Tucson sector, which is now the hot spot in the last 5 months, has had more than 312,000 encounters. In that small area, you have more than 2,000 a day who are being interdicted, and those are the people who surrender. It might be one of the most remote border areas on the southwest border on the Tohono O'odham Reservation at the San Miguel gate. It might be in Lukeville where, if you were paying attention, Bill Melugin sent to the world video footage from just a few days ago where the cartels had cut a hole in the fence and dozens and dozens of illegal aliens were coming in through that hole. That is what is happening. What are the numbers? Those are the numbers. The numbers reach into the millions every year. That doesn't include the got-aways, both known and unknown. What countries are they coming from? I remember well being down in Yuma, and 25 men of military age came across. I said: Where are you from? Well, we are from Russia. We got the Russian interpreter on the phone, those of us from Congress. Then they said: No, no, we are from Ukraine. We actually happened to have access to a Ukrainian interpreter. Then they said: Oh, well, actually we really are from Russia. I have met them from Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, Burkina Faso. Every country, 180 countries are represented in that pool of people coming into our country illegally. What are the results? My good friend from Georgia has given you a litany of people who have been basically injured, killed, maimed, robbed, raped by people who have come into this country illegally. If you were to hear the left, they would tell you, oh, wait a second, you are saying everybody coming across, you are stigmatizing everyone. No, we are not stigmatizing everyone. What I am telling you is, if these people weren't here who aren't supposed to be here, none of this would have happened. I have friends who have lost children, killed by illegal aliens. What do Americans think of this? What do Americans think of this? Eighty-five percent of them said this is the most important issue. What do the left do on their little TV shows that few people watch? They laugh. They laugh that anyone would say that that is an issue in Virginia or in Georgia or in Montana or anywhere because they simply don't care about American life. Mr. Speaker, I join Representative Clyde in calling upon my colleagues, the Republican colleagues, to understand that we have got to demand enforcement from this regime. The way you get it is you actually leverage spending. That is what the Founders gave us. I call on my colleagues to leverage this minibus, this DHS CR to make sure we get enforcement. I also call upon the Speaker to bring up our border security bills every day, bring one up every day. Let's vote on one every day. Let's give these guys an opportunity to show that they really care about the border.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, our hearts do go out to the family of Laken Riley. Now, we also must acknowledge that we can no longer take the feigned, empty words of sympathy from those across the aisle who refuse to do something meaningful to stop the onslaught that is happening in America today. Let's think about this. You need to acknowledge you haven't done anything. You sent to us a foreign aid bill that you have claimed is a border security bill. It is no such thing. However, let's face this fact, as well. Let's face the fact that the law requires detention already. The detention provisions of title 8 are civil in nature and not criminal in nature, and that is why there is already authority and mandates to hold people in custody when they haven't been convicted of various acts, such as drug distribution, prostitution, and other vices. This bill simply adds another criminal offense to a civil construct. Let's admit that you don't want to stop that. Let's admit that you don't really want to secure the border. If you wanted to secure the border and if this administration wanted to secure the border, there is authority under title 8 right now to enact border closure procedures. This administration has allowed people to come in running rampant. This administration should apologize to the family of the 11-year-old girl who was raped last week by a Guatemalan illegal alien who should never have been released from custody. This happens over and over again. It is time now to stand up and say you support this bill, and you are going to begin to take action to bring the border under control. If you want to talk about parole, we can go into a lengthy discussion about parole, but I am not going into a lengthy discussion.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. The gentleman is exactly right. What is the legislative branch's remedy to an executive branch that refuses to follow the law? It is to remove spending. I introduced legislation. I introduced legislation that said: We will fund ICE, CBP. We are going to fund TSA. We are going to fund air traffic controllers and our military personnel, and do you know what? We are not going to fund anything else, except for mandatories, until this administration actually enforces the border. However, we can't do that because there is this fear of a shutdown. Explain that to the American people. Explain that to the American people in my community. Go down there and take a look at the national forest, where there is now a squatters camp set up, filled with people who are flowing across our border. Our leader said in November that we are not going to do any more short-term CRs--had it with them. This is the third one. Do you know what happens? We just keep spending money, and we keep the policies that are in place. That means the border remains open. This country remains in danger because of this administration--but not just this administration but because this body does not use what the Founders gave us as the ultimate tool, and that is the purse strings. It is really shameful.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, over the last several years, we have received a seemingly endless stream of reports of abuses by the FBI and other parts of our Federal police apparatus spying on Americans by abusing either section 702 or title I of FISA. I want to review some of those today before I get to the border. Let's talk about the report issued April 21, 2022, by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Washington, D.C. Here's what some of them are. Between late 2016 and early 2020, the FBI regularly queried unminimized FISA information using identifiers of individuals listed in local police homicide reports. This wasn't people accused. This included victims. They were using illicit querying, which in my world, when I used to practice, we would call an illegal search. They were going after victims, the next of kin of the victim, and witnesses. Guess what was found. Those queries were violating the querying standard because there was no reasonable basis to expect they would return foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime. That is just one. The next one, June 2020, used identifiers of 133 individuals arrested in connection with civil unrest and protests between May 30 and June 18, 2020. Guess what they found. No specific potential connections to terrorist-related activity, and there was not going to be a reasonable likelihood that they would retrieve evidence of a crime. The FBI still conducted that illegal query. Between June 11 and 15, 2020, another 156 queries were done. Guess what. No reasonable likelihood of finding evidence of a crime or international terrorism. On the January 6 issue, an analyst ran 13 queries and couldn't even remember why she was doing this. There was no reasonable likelihood to receive foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime. On April 26, 2021, again, more going after political activist groups, and there were 330 queries and 697 queries. Again, there was no likelihood of foreign intelligence and no evidence of a crime. They continued on, two more queries, another 360 queries here, another 400 here. None of these queries were reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime. How about this one. They conducted three batch queries. This is the FBI spying on Americans. They conducted three batch queries consisting of approximately 23,132 separate queries. Guess what, Mr. Speaker? Those are all related to January 6. What did they find? No basis to believe the queries were reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime from section 702 of FISA. How about this one, this is a favorite, 19,000 people wanted to donate to a political campaign. So they donated to somebody's campaign. What happened, Mr. Speaker? The FBI queried all 19,000 of those people. Guess what, Mr. Speaker? They said that there were only eight of these 19,000 who had any ties whatsoever to foreign influence. They abused the civil liberties of 19,000 individuals without a reasonable basis. I could go on here. There are 2,000 more between April 1, 2020, and March 31, again, no likelihood of intelligence, no likelihood that they will find anything leading to a crime, and it goes on and on in this report. People say to me: Andy, why do you think we have to have a warrant before the Federal Government starts gaining access to your personal and private telecommunications data? It is because the FBI has abused it time and time again. So when we start looking at this, we see other things. How about this one. This report literally came out yesterday on Valentine's Day. The U.S. intelligence community asked foreign spy agencies to surveil 26 associates of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election. They asked 26 foreign spy agencies of the Five Eyes to spy. Now, who are the Five Eyes? They are intelligence gathering organizations in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They asked them to spy on people working in Donald Trump's campaign. There was no basis for it. There was no indication that there was any wrongdoing going on and that they would find foreign intelligence, but they had something that they wanted to do, and that was to craft a narrative. Do you know who knew about that, Mr. Speaker? The highest levels of the Barack Obama Government. When I say highest levels, it was President Obama, Vice President Biden, James Clapper, and James Comey. In December of 2023, a letter was written by the chairwoman of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Now, this is important because my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee want to tell you that: Oh, my gosh, you can't have warrants. If you have warrants, we are not going to be able to spy on enough people, so we can't stop potential threats to the country. By the way, when I asked them about this letter, because I had this letter, they said: We never heard of that person, and we never heard of that board. Odd, isn't it, that that board is mentioned in the base bill that they signed off on? It is mentioned in the base bill. What is it for? This is a group that is supposed to help monitor and make sure that we get everything we need to in order to cure and fix FISA going forward. Now, I am going to take a brief break before I continue on with that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the redoubtable gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins).

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, my good friend from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), who is very eloquent as he conveyed our passion and our sincere desire to curb and restrain an out-of-control, weaponized Federal Government. So, Mr. Speaker, as I was talking before, how do you get there? One of the solutions is you have a warrant before you are able to go and conduct that investigation, that basic query into my personal data. We have got some here who don't want to do that. They say: Oh, no, no, we need to expand our spying. They actually want more authority when they have abused it, literally 278,000 times in the last few years, with what the Inspector General said were unlawful queries. So we asked the head of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, whose job it is to watch the FISA Court, to say: Look, tell us. We want to know if there is a warrant there, is it going to hinder collection of information that is necessary for the national security of the country? Do you know what she said, Mr. Speaker? She said: I strongly disagree that a requirement for FISC approval of U.S. person queries would amount to a de facto ban. What is that requirement? It is a warrant. As noted in my separate statement: Requiring FISC review of U.S. person query terms is necessary to protect Americans' privacy rights and, in my view, would neither cause an end to U.S. person queries nor undermine the overall efficacy of section 702 and protect the U.S. national security. Especially assuming that Congress were to provide exceptions as outlined and we have provided those exceptions. Those exceptions in our warrant requirement are consistent with the canon of law which interprets the most controversial--I shouldn't say controversial--but the most contested of the Bill of Rights, which is the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, not only is the exception there, I brought this just so you could see, Mr. Speaker, just so I could hold it up so everybody could see. Where these blue tabs are there are other parts of that same underlying base bill which would curb this abuse of FISA that actually have the same exceptions. So to my colleagues who are complaining that: Oh, no, we can't go forward because we have to have carte blanche on it. The reality is they themselves know and they have approved those exceptions in other parts of the base bill. Now, I am going to leave FISA for a second. I have to say one more thing. We were scheduled today, this week, we were supposed to be having right now the debate and vote on the rule to allow this base bill to go forward and on the amendments, three amendments from the Judiciary Committee and three from the Intelligence Committee, so we would have a true, regular order, open debate on this, on this very critical issue. Something happened yesterday. We had the presentation by Judiciary and the Rules Committee, and about that time, there was an announcement that there was something going on, a top-secret, national security issue, come down to the classified room and you can read the documents. At that time when that statement was released by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, what happened to the Dow Jones? It took a spike downward because it spooked our economy. What happened around the world? Nations wanted to know what in the heck is he talking about. He is the Intelligence Committee chairman. They were concerned and nervous about that. Now, I went down and read that document. I can't talk about the document, Mr. Speaker, but I can tell you what the ranking member said. The ranking member said: There is nothing to panic about. There is nothing new here. I have never seen U.S. national security leveraged to prevent us from even being able to debate a bill or an amendment. In this case, it is not even the bill, it is just the amendment. It is outrageous. Now, let's talk about something else that is outrageous. I just spent hours in a committee hearing. My Democratic friends always use the terms ``fanatic MAGA Republicans, far-right MAGA Republicans.'' They said that they, those far-right MAGA Republicans, they have to obey Donald Trump on the border. Donald Trump doesn't want anything done on the border. I am going to tell you something right now, Mr. Speaker. My far-left fanatic Democrat friends are intent on obeying Joe Biden, President Biden, and they don't want the border secure. They say: Oh, my gosh. Joe Biden says: I have to have more authorities. He didn't need more authorities when he issued dozens of executive orders within 72 hours of becoming inaugurated as President that basically emasculated all of our border security. Title 8 has not been revised. Title 8 is still there. That is the title under which CBP and ICE operate and USCIS. Right there. That hasn't been changed. Do you know what has been changed, Mr. Speaker? This administration has basically said: We are not going to enforce the law. Not only do they say that; when you go down to the border, and I go down often, and I talk to them: Where are you from? I am from Senegal. Really. What are you doing over here? I am from Burkina Faso. How about you? I am from Guinea. How about you? Guatemala. They are from all over the world--Mali, Mauritania. Down in Lukeville, for a while, Mauritania was the number one country of origin for these illegal aliens. Why are you coming? We were told it is easy to get into the United States today. That is why we are here. You are from northeast Africa. Why are you coming to the U.S., into an out-of-the-way place like Lukeville, Arizona? Well, I am here because the Office of Migration for the United Nations told me it is actually easier to get across the U.S. border than it is to get into Europe today. Let me just tell you, we saw this today in our hearing. One of the Democrats said: What authority do you think President Biden has today that he could actually shut the border? Our witness correctly cited 8 U.S.C. section 1182(f), which confers upon the President the authority to close the border in response to a crisis. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that in Trump v. Hawaii. They noted that the statute entrusted the President with the decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions. Don't tell me that this President can't close the border tomorrow. I will give you another example. The Del Rio Sector, Del Rio--you will remember this. The Del Rio Bridge, that bridge that goes across the Rio Grande, there is a port of entry right up there on the bridge. Haitians were coming in, 15 to 20,000 a day. They have had 15,000 or so underneath that bridge. The question at that point was this: Why is Mexico letting them organize? They were organizing down about 60 miles south of the border, bus caravans of Haitians, bringing them up. They would then wade across the Rio Grande River. What can we do? The CBP sector chief said: I am closing that port of entry. Now, when you close the port of entry, guess who gets stopped? That is right, legal traffic and the commercial legal traffic. Do you know what happened? The town just across the river from Del Rio, they said: We can't take this. They lasted 2 days. They called the Federal Government of Mexico and said: We can't have this port of entry closed. They stopped transporting those illegal aliens to the border to come across. That is what happens. When you close that border, you close that down and use that leverage, all of a sudden, Mexico becomes compliant, and they stop facilitating illegal aliens, that illegal border crossing. That is what happens when you have the will to do something. I commend the sector chief there, because they kind of took it on their own on that. That is what goes on, and that is what has to go on. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?