Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership here on the floor today. Is there a crisis? I think there is, and I am glad that we are here today where our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are finally acknowledging that there is a crisis. Not that long ago, the Speaker of the House called the situation a fake crisis at the border. Senate Minority Leader Schumer called it a crisis that does not exist. The House majority leader said that there is no crisis at the border. The House Democratic Caucus chairman, Hakeem Jeffries, said that there is no crisis at the border. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Engel called the situation a fake crisis at the border. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said that there is no crisis at the border. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that we don't have a border crisis. I could go on and on and on of statements on the record, in the news media, in this building, and in this Chamber saying that there is no border crisis. Now, either that is putting your head in the sand and ignoring the facts in front of you, or it was very purposeful. It was very purposeful to try to hide the fact that there is, in fact, a crisis for some sort of cynical political gain. The fact of the matter is, in May of this year, there were 84,000 families that attempted to enter the country and that were apprehended--84,000, which is more than all of 2014. Anybody with eyes, anybody who has gone to the border has seen that there has been a crisis for months on end, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle were willfully ignoring it. President Obama, in 2014, put forward a bill, legislation, that was introduced by Senator Mikulski that added $762 million in it for ICE to deal with unaccompanied children at the time, which, today, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we cannot do. President Obama was asking for money for ICE, and today we are told, no, you can't have any money for ICE. But if the majority doesn't provide resources to ICE, where are they going to put the children whom they say they want to take care of? Where are they going to put the families? Where are they going to put the people they are detaining at the border? When the majority creates a tent facility at CBP to process people at the border, as this bill suggests doing, they have no resources in there for DOD; they have no resources in there for ICE in any significant way; and they have no place to put the people they say they want to take care of in this bill. What are they asking CBP and what are they asking our people at the border to do? Then the majority has the audacity to point at ICE and CBP and tell them they are failing to do their jobs when, for months on end, we have not provided the resources necessary for them to do their job. The American people sent us here to solve problems, and one of those is to secure the border of the United States and to ensure those people who seek to come here can do so safely, yet we bury our head in the sand for political gain and ignore the facts on the ground.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, this legislation falls short. This legislation that the House leadership has put forward has been late, does not address the problem, and will, in fact, make the problem worse by binding the hands of Border Patrol and binding the hands of the people whom we have asked to do their job. We should reject this legislation. We should work together to provide legislation that would actually solve the problem and stop enriching cartels on the backs of human beings because the strongest nation in the history of the world refuses to acknowledge the problem that cartels are exploiting asylum laws and human beings for profit.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Texas for her leadership on this issue and dealing with this important legislation. Madam Speaker, I am always perplexed when listening to the arguments on this topic that we are not talking about the actual problem. So when we are talking about the facilities that need to have more supplies and more dollars for support, I agree. I don't think anybody in this room disagrees at all. But nothing we are going to do today is going to actually solve the problem. I have got an exchange here with a group of Border Patrol agents who texted me to say, about this legislation: This does nothing but perpetuate the catch-and-release magnet. While there are some good pieces to the bill, why are we not increasing ICE beds? Why are we providing taxpayer funding to educate border crossers on the asylum process? Why do we keep providing money to let people go that violate our immigration laws? This just provides more incentives for people to cross the border illegally. If this were to pass, why would anyone stop crossing? They said, this is what I refer to as completing the human smuggling cycle. Cartels drop off people at our borders, UACs, family units. Border Patrol takes them, then delivers them, engages with the NGOs. The NGOs aid these folks who are here, so they can reach their family members that are in the United States waiting for them. So the family members in the U.S. are the ones paying the cartels their smuggling fees. And the NGOs are then reimbursed, and the whole process, it is completing the entire cycle. This legislation will perpetuate the problem because we are not actually going to address the situation with ICE beds. We are not going to do anything to stop the flow, and we are going to empower the cartels who have operational control of our border, full operational control of our border. If you talk to anybody on the border who knows what is actually going on--we should reject this legislation in favor of legislation that will actually solve the problem.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 403, ``nay'' on rollcall No. 404, ``yea'' on rollcall No. 405, and ``nay'' on rollcall No. 406.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding. In 2016, HUD published a final rule, the Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual's Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs rule requiring Community Planning and Development- funded single-sex projects ``to provide all individuals, including transgender individuals and other individuals who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, with access to programs, benefits, services, and accommodations in accordance with their gender identity without being subjected to intrusive questioning or being asked to provide documentation.'' This rule prohibits a HUD-funded shelter from providing for single- sex facilities based on an individual's gender at birth. There are other rules that were put in place in the Obama administration, similarly. None of these rules recognize that housing programs, particularly faith-based facilities, ability to distinguish between genders and an individual's marital status; both rules placing vulnerable women at risk. This administration announced a proposed rule that ``permits shelter providers to consider a range of factors in making such determinations, including: privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs, any relevant considerations under civil rights and nondiscrimination authorities . . . `' I could go on. It is a commonsense rule. Yet, now, we are sitting here in an appropriations bill when we are supposed to be figuring out how to fund the important, ailing infrastructure of this country, housing and urban development, figure out how to solve the problems in this country, while we have got a border that is being overwhelmed every single day--yes, I am coming back to that because it is the crisis of our day--and now we are turning this into a gender-identity game. The gentleman from South Carolina is properly trying to protect the ability of this administration to have a commonsense rule to ensure that people are safe when we have got facilities in place and the Federal Government has something to do it with. I applaud him for doing so. I would ask my Democrat colleagues why we are not getting back to the business of the day, making sure that we have strong infrastructure, strong border security, and doing the job the American people actually sent us to do instead of manufacturing social engineering and gender identities.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding, and I want to thank the gentlewoman from Missouri for her comments. I can't expound upon her eloquent comments much more or the gentleman from South Carolina about the concerns that we have with what has been put in this appropriations bill and why I support the gentleman from South Carolina's amendment to make sure that the Secretary of HUD has the ability to do his job and to do the right thing. I notice that my friend on the other side of the aisle mentioned the Equality Act. Well, what I am hearing from my constituents in Texas is they are concerned. They are concerned that were the Equality Act to be passed out of the Senate, it would undermine the ability of their daughters to compete. What we are seeing around the country is boys who decide to declare themselves females run in races and make it impossible for girls to compete. This is happening. We see it. It is happening in real time. I just wonder what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think is being accomplished with an Equality Act that turns on its head the very idea and the very notion of what we have got with respect to the differences between men and women and the ability to recognize that, embrace it, and be able to have women compete in sports. Here we are in this false name of equality blowing up the ability of secretaries and people in the administration to make commonsense determinations about how to house people, to make tough choices, and to be able to figure out what to do. Heaven forbid they rely upon biological sex to make that determination. This is why my wife and I, who have been products of public schools K through law school, have our children in a private school because we keep getting our values blown to heck and common sense blown to heck in schools where bathrooms suddenly become social engineering experiments. That is what we see happening as a result of what is happening in the body and what is happening in an appropriations bill.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate his working with me on this important issue. I do want to say that I appreciate the floor staff and staff in the Parliamentarian's Office over the last few days. Obviously, we have had some interesting activities on the floor of the House that I think are important because I think it is important to vote and that this issue is important. I do want to thank the staff for all of their hard work in support of what goes on on the floor. As a former staffer, I know the amount of time that goes into that. Madam Speaker, I do believe that we should defeat the previous question. I do believe that we should move immediately to consideration of H.R. 3056, which my good friend from Alabama has put forward, as an important reflection of what the President and his Office of Management and Budget have asked for to deal with the humanitarian crisis at our border. We have gone over quite a bit of what has been going on on our border. Lost in all of that are the people, the humanitarian reality of what is happening at the border, the children, moms, families; the lack of places to put people; a Border Patrol that is overwhelmed, literally overwhelmed trying to do its job to secure the border of the United States. They literally don't know where to put people. They have them and they are going, ``What do I do with them?'' They have to follow the law. They have to try to do screenings. They have to try to do health screenings. They have to try to perform the basic functions of their duty. Yet, they don't have the resources necessary to do it because this body, for whatever reason, refuses to do that. I know there are ongoing negotiations. There are ongoing conversations in the Senate and the House about trying to reach some agreement. But let's be honest: This has taken far too long since the President's initial request, leaving Border Patrol, ICE, and those who are dealing with this crisis at the border without the knowledge of whether they are going to have the resources necessary to do it and without any support for what they are doing today. Today, somebody is going to be abused at the border. Some little girl, some family, is going to be abused at the hands of the cartels that have operational control of our border. If you talk to anybody with deep knowledge of what is going on at the border, they know the cartels have operational control of our border. They are making hundreds of millions of dollars moving people, not just fentanyl, not just dangerous narcotics, but people. It is something that should end today. We have the power, this body, to end it today. We should just call up H.R. 3056 and pass it. It would solve the problem. It would at least solve the problem of what they are dealing with in the humanitarian crisis. What it won't do is solve the asylum problem. What it won't do is solve the catch-and-release problem. What it won't do is solve the problem of being able to take unaccompanied children safely back to families at home. None of that will be solved in H.R. 3056. But H.R. 3056 is the bare minimum of what we ought to do in this body to ensure that people have the resources necessary to care for people when we are trying to manage a broken border overrun with crime, where communities in Texas are being ravaged, where yesterday a mayor came here and gave a press conference talking about car chases in the streets, where fentanyl is pouring across our border. I urge this body to defeat the previous question and to move to H.R. 3056.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 364, I mistakenly voted ``no'' when I intended to vote ``yes''. Amendment No. 97 Offered by Mr. Banks

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Michigan, and I want to rise to offer my support for his tireless efforts on this topic, in particular. It should not be a hard question that the American citizens, the people who live here afforded protections under our Constitution, should not be targeted unnecessarily, even when we are doing our appropriate job to target those who wish to do us harm abroad. I believe that the amendment in question attempts to do just that, to ensure we have those tools to target those abroad while protecting American citizens, and I thank the gentleman for his efforts.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, the truth is the President of the United States shouldn't be forced to have to make the tough decisions of figuring out how to secure our border without support from this institution, but that is precisely what is happening. The President of the United States is having to look at a crisis on our border that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle just simply straight up refuse to acknowledge exists. When I was down at the border in McAllen in January, I was told of about 200,000 people that would be apprehended; maybe 200,000 that would not be apprehended. And I was told 90 percent of that was going to come through McAllen, as opposed to Brownsville. Why? Because there is fencing in Brownsville. I would ask my colleagues whether they have ever been to the border, in the cane, along the river, talking to Border Patrol when they are there at 11:00 at night, and they have radios that don't work; cell signals that don't work. They can't see the river because the cane is too thick. They have no roads that are lateral that run along the river, so they can move up and down the river to protect our border. They are down there by themselves, and the cartels have operational control of the river. The Reynoso faction of the Gulf Cartel, they own it. They are making hundreds of millions of dollars moving people through McAllen right now. And right now, little girls are going to be abused on the journey because we bury our heads in the sand. The President is trying to secure the border, and the Democrats, in another cynical attempt to stop security, are putting provisions and poison pills in this legislation to prevent the kind of security that is needed for our border. I, for the life of me, don't understand it. I appreciate my colleague from Texas standing up and making this point that we should be preserving the ability of the President to be able to do his job in the absence of a Congress willing to do its job.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to consider a measure that I would like to speak about for 1 minute.

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, to be clear, my request was to call up H.R. 3056, a measure to make sure we have the funding necessary to end the border security crisis that the President and his Office of Management and Budget sent to the Congress. It is Mr. Rogers from Alabama's bill.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today troubled that one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle compared the activities of the United States Government and Border Patrol on the southern border of the United States to concentration camps. For the life me, I cannot understand why we have allowed discourse to get to this place where the efforts by Border Patrol to secure our border, to house children, to house women, to house families, to deal with the fact that the cartels are attacking our border and profiting while doing it, and trying to care for these people while we are trying to enforce our laws, comparing that to the horrors of World War II, and saying that my friend Hector Garza is somehow the Gestapo today, and comparing what is happening at the border to concentration camps. I am really troubled and offended, and I think that the people of south Texas and Border Patrol are offended after what they are doing to try to defend the United States of America against cartels attacking the United States and profiting by moving people across the border.