Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Will there be any amendments related to this current appropriations bill taken up during that time?

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, is that session tomorrow that we would be meeting a pro forma session?

Mr. ROY

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

Mr. ROY

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

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I appreciate that, and I would only point out in response to my friend from New York, and recognizing that this is an HHS-related matter, that one of the issues we are trying to deal with with respect to HHS is the office of ORR in dealing with the children and dealing with the unaccompanied children that we don't have anyplace to house, and we are looking for $4\1/2\ billion to deal with the problem at our border, including dealing with ORR and the children who are being housed at HHS. That it is a very paramount issue, and I think it is relevant in this particular moment.

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, it is 1:35 in the morning here on the East Coast. I represent a district in Texas. Somewhere in Texas right now are a host of families and children who have no place to be put, nowhere to be put because we are not doing our job. Those are facts. All the theater, all the grandstanding that is going to be pointed out here on the floor of the House of Representatives, those are the facts. There is a child today who doesn't have a place to be put. We can't just take that child and put him or her someplace magical. We have to have a place to put him or her. Today, right now, the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel is making hundreds of millions of dollars moving people--not just fentanyl, not just cocaine, not just heroin, although lots of that, too, but moving people. Right now, somewhere in the United States of America, particularly probably in Houston or San Antonio, there is a stash house with children in it and people in it being held hostage to pay money back to the cartels. If you don't believe it, go talk to the people in the Department of Public Safety in Texas and CBP and ICE in Texas. Talk to them. That is what is actually happening. And how can we, with a straight face, say that we are the most powerful nation in the world and allow that to be happening at our border, while our asylum laws are being exploited by cartels for profit, asylum laws which we should have, but where people should go to ports of entry and have a path to come here? Instead, we allow them to be violated by cartels for profit, and cartels have operational control of our border. I literally cannot comprehend how our colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe it is more appropriate to bury their heads in the sand of this Chamber and ignore this, ignore this problem, this real problem, where 144,000 people were apprehended in May. HHS has taken charge of nearly 41,000 UACs this year--41,000. In December, 4,700 unaccompanied children were apprehended on the southern border. In May, 11,500 unaccompanied alien minor children were apprehended on the southern border. These are the actual numbers. Does that not matter?

Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Maryland. I appreciate my friend from New York's concern about this important issue that is obviously paramount for the Nation. Every State in the Union is touched by the tragedy of opioid abuse. I do want to point out, as has, I think, been made clear by my colleagues and myself about our continued concern about our lack of appreciation and effort by this body to deal with the crisis at our border, that the impact on the opioid problem by the trafficking going on at our southern border is significant. I think we all agree on that. We all recognize that. In fact, my colleague from New York and I have sat in Oversight hearings where we have had witnesses there where we talk about the massive increase over the last several years in the amount of narcotics that are coming through our southern border, and this is just something that I hope we can have a bipartisan understanding and agreement on about addressing and actually dealing with the concern. According to Border Patrol's most recent data, through the end of May, they seized 144 pounds of fentanyl between ports of entry since October; 98 percent was seized on our southwest border. Fentanyl, in a pack of sugar, is enough to kill everybody in this room. It is a very dangerous narcotic--144 pounds between ports of entry. In 2018, U.S. Border Patrol seized 388 pounds of fentanyl. 6,162 ounces of heroin have been seized between the ports of entry in fiscal year 2019 alone; 444 pounds of cocaine in May of this year between the ports of entry. Office of Field Operations has seized 241,000 pounds of drugs, total. Seventy thousand Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, and fentanyl played a large roll in that. Deaths involving fentanyl increased more than 45 percent in 2017, alone. I could go through the stats and we can keep talking about it, but I would hope that, on an issue like this, where I believe very much in the heart of my colleague and what she is trying to accomplish with this amendment, that we could come to an agreement that the vast quantities of these narcotics, so much of it is coming across our southern border. In addition to, obviously, the prescription drug problems we have had and we have been dealing with and we are trying to deal with, we have got to address this problem. The cartels, literally, have operational control of our border; and the consequences aren't just the profit on the back of people and children and what we are dealing with and the inability to house them, but it is in this, in the opioid crisis that we are all trying to deal with that is being supplied so much from both China and then through Mexico.

Mr. ROY

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

Mr. ROY. Mr. 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. Mr. Chairman, we are sitting here 10:30 at night, and I am mystified that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are preaching about this issue, which is already the policy of the administration, and yet we are not funding the $4.5 billion request from the administration to deal with the problem at hand. Our border is being overrun. My friend from Texas knows this, we know it, if you go spend any time on the border. We had 144,000 people apprehended on our southern border. HHS has taken charge of nearly 41,000 unaccompanied alien children this year, a 57 percent increase from last year. I could go down stat after stat after stat. Little girls are being abused on the journey and cartels are profiting while we ignore it. Talk to the mayor of Uvalde, Texas, and throughout the southern area of Texas, talk to the people about what is actually happening in the communities.

Mr. ROY. I cannot believe, for the life of me, that we can't come together in a bipartisan fashion to pass $4.5 billion to fund the necessary beds, to fund what is necessary to house these children. When people talk about kids in cages, are they directly attacking Border Patrol? Have they spent time with Border Patrol who are trying to figure out whether a kid's dad is actually the dad or whether it is somebody who is using that child? That is happening today while this body waxes on about whatever amendment we are throwing on the floor right now that is already part of the administrative policy. We are not actually addressing the problem. And the American people sent us here to do that: Oh, by the way, oh, no, we are demanding votes. Heaven forbid this body votes. Heaven forbid we follow the Constitution, which says something about a quorum. Maybe we should actually be in this body voting on the things the American people sent us here to do, like secure the border and ensure the safe passage of migrants in the United States of America under our rule of law.

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

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

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

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

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

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I am here before a relatively empty Chamber, as is too often the case in the people's House, as I want to raise to the attention of the American people the absolute crisis and tragedy that is occurring on the southern border of the United States. It is unconscionable what we are allowing to occur. As we speak today, a little girl and her mom will be abused on the journey through Mexico while this country, the most powerful nation in the history of the world, buries its head in the sand because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, in a cynical political gesture and move, refuse to actually take up the supplemental request from the President of the United States for $4\1/2\ billion to provide the beds and the resources necessary to deal with the crisis, and to start taking up the bills that we should take up to ensure we fix the asylum crisis that cartels are using for profit, and to fix the catch- and-release broken system that is allowing our system to be overrun, allowing communities in Texas to be overrun. This is a tragedy, and it is unconscionable that this body will not address it.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, in light of the humanitarian crisis at our border and what is happening to the migrants who seek to come here and to the people of the United States of America, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 3056, an emergency supplemental to provide critically needed funding for the humanitarian crisis at the border, and ask for its immediate consideration.