Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to be here on the floor of the House of Representatives this 502nd anniversary of Reformation Day.

Madam Speaker, prior to discussing immigration policy and the other issues of the day, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington).

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I realized that a lot of what has been said here the last few days focuses on an impeachment inquiry, and one has to ask oneself why we have so many people who have been wanting to try to impeachment President Trump immediately.

It was, obviously, a very important vote today, but it is the fourth vote I have taken, I believe, since President Trump has been sworn in on impeachment. So far, nothing has turned up. I don't expect anything to turn up in the future.

But I think one of the motivations for this impeachment inquiry is to keep other stories off the page, to keep other stories out of the mainstream media. And that is why, today, I want to address what I think is the biggest threat to America in the short term and a threat, unless we deal with it, which will ultimately destroy our country, and that is the threat of illegal immigration, of people flowing across the southern border.

I have been at the southern border three times this year to see for myself what Border Patrol and other people in charge of securing our border have to put up with, and I would like to say that they have done a tremendous job.

Yesterday, in this building, while so many people were focused on the impeachment inquiry, we had a hearing in the subcommittee of the Oversight and Reform Committee in which Ken Cuccinelli, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office head, and Matthew Albence, Acting Director of ICE, were testifying before our subcommittee.

It was interesting, the appalling comments that they had to put up with from Members of this House, being called white supremacists, just doing their job trying to secure the border. Those are the type of things that every American should be aware of what is going on in this building.

But I would like to update people on the good job that President Trump has been able to do in the last 6 months, why he has been able to do this job, and the hatred which it has brought our President.

In May, over 145,000 people were processed trying to get into this country, and we allowed over 100,000 people in this country.

About a year ago, there was a study put out by MIT and Yale which increased the estimated number of people in this country illegally from 10 to 11 million to 20 to 22 million people. That is a lot of people.

Obviously, we could not forever go on, May after May after May, in which 100,000 people were allowed in this country.

That, by the way, is in addition to people who sneak in the country without being detected because we have no wall and we have not adequately funded our Border Patrol. I think experts believe another 10,000 people probably came in, at least 10,000 came into this country in May undetected.

Since that time, President Trump has reached agreements with Mexico, in part by threatening tariffs, in part by just general suasion, and we have reduced the number of people coming into this country from over 100,000 in May to, I am told by the Border Patrol, perhaps under 5,000 in September after processing 40,000 to 50,000. This is because President Trump reached an agreement with Mexico that they will hold asylum seekers down there.

He has reached out and reached agreements or received help from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, in addition to Mexico, in not only keeping more of their citizens there, but if people try to leave other countries for asylum, more are being kept in places like Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras.

I want to point out, too, that this is not something that Congress helped him with. These are things that he has had to do on his own.

There are other things that he is trying to do that Congress should be taking up, but isn't.

He has been trying to keep people from coming into this country if they are a public charge. We have enough people who we are taking care of in our country--some through their own fault, some through no fault of their own--on various welfare programs.

President Trump tried to say: Hey, we will maybe take people who are working. We will take people who want to come here legally. But courts, including a prominent judge appointed by President Clinton, struck that down. So President Trump was denied the opportunity to prevent people from coming here who are going to be a public charge.

President Trump is still waiting--and I hope he does--to do something about birthright citizenship, another situation that I saw when I was on the border in which, obviously, America, being 1 of only 2 of the 40 wealthiest countries in the world to say, if you have a child here, you get to be a citizen.

His Border Patrol has been acting with inadequate funding. They have had, up until recently, 2,000 vacancies. They could use more people in addition to that.

We are in the process of building 500 miles of wall. It is not going to be enough. But we like to believe we are going to be able to get that done by the end of December.

But, in any event, after doing all of these actions, we have done a much better job--I would say the best job we have had in years--of holding down the number of immigrants in this country.

Like I said, the sad thing is, largely, this is President Trump acting on his own while Congress tries to remove the immigration crisis from the headlines by spending day after day talking about impeachment, trying to chase some rumor down, or maybe somebody operating under the guidance of a Congressman making charges against President Trump.

But I will just ask the American public to keep their eye on the ball, and that ball is immigration. We cannot go back to the days of 100,000 people being allowed in this country every month.

We have to make sure that the policies that President Trump has implemented in the last 5 months continue to be implemented.

We have to demand from Congress action on the variety of things that they should be doing instead of filling up the press with stories on impeachment.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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