Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, this amendment would prohibit the expenditure of funds to extend what is known as temporary protected status, or TPS, for nationals of El Salvador.

TPS is a tool provided by Congress that allows for the President, acting through the Department of Homeland Security, to allow foreign nationals to remain temporarily in the United States if conditions in their home country are too dangerous to send them back.

The intent was to authorize a short reprieve from removal, with the idea being that the beneficiaries would be repatriated when conditions improved. Unfortunately, however, like so many immigration laws, this narrow authority has been repeatedly abused.

Nationals of El Salvador, for example, were granted TPS in the chaotic aftermath of an earthquake. Here is the problem: That earthquake was in 2001, more than two decades ago.

Mr. Chair, times have changed. Since 2001, America has had four presidents and El Salvador has had five. El Salvador now boasts the lowest homicide rate of any country in our hemisphere, other than Canada, not to mention a robust tourism ministry that markets whale watching, surfing, gourmet coffee tours, scenic volcano hikes, and posh all-inclusive resorts.

Mr. Chair, I am glad that El Salvador has recovered from the 2001 earthquake, and I applaud the progress their leader has made in combating crime and promoting economic reform.

However, the ``T'' in TPS stands for ``temporary.'' TPS was never intended to operate as a permanent loophole to provide rolling amnesty to hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals, most of whom were here illegally to begin with.

Mr. Chair, I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Amodei).
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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, I would just add, in response to the comments that we just heard from the other side of the aisle, they should tell the American people who have suffered through the fentanyl deaths that are the number one killer of young people in America. Tell that to the American people as they see terrorists come into this country. Tell this to the people of America as they see murders happen all over the country, including people dying in my district clear up in northern Wisconsin.

We also heard about continuous natural disasters. There are always natural disasters in every country. Do we let people from every country come in just because they have natural disasters?

This is TPS. It is temporary. Twenty years is plenty of temporary. It is time to stop the temporary protected status for El Salvador.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, this amendment is very similar to the prior amendment. It prohibits the expenditure of funds to extend temporary protected status, in this case to nationals from Honduras.

That ``T'' in TPS is important because it stands for ``temporary.'' In the case of Honduras, this temporary designation was issued in response to a hurricane. When did that hurricane make landfall, you might ask? It was in October of 1998. Bill Clinton was in the White House, gasoline was $1.05 per gallon, Microsoft had just replaced General Electric as America's most valuable company, and the first BlackBerry wouldn't hit store shelves for another year. Yet this temporary amnesty continues.

Like El Salvador, conditions in Honduras have improved. The country elected a new President in 2022, completing a peaceful transfer of power. Honduras also has an active tourism industry, marketing ziplining, visits to U.N. World Heritage sites, world-class scuba diving, and some of the Caribbean's best beaches and all-inclusive resorts.

If Honduras is safe enough to welcome millions of tourists each year, isn't it safe enough to welcome Hondurans back home?

Mr. Chair, it is time to put the ``T'' back in TPS. TPS was never intended to be the ``Hotel California'' that says illegal aliens can check in anytime but they can never leave.

Mr. Chair, I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chairman, this is the appropriate forum to bring this before. It is to deny funding for something that is no longer temporary. This has become, we might as well rename it PPS, permanent protective status rather than TPS.

This is the appropriate venue to deny the funding to allow the President to continue to use this just like every other means, whether it is parole and all other type things, to be able to allow people to illegally come into our country.

By the way, what country around the world hasn't had a natural disaster?

Are we going to let people come in from every country in the world when there is a hurricane, a typhoon, or an earthquake, whatever natural disaster happens?

That is what we are being set up for here.

When we hear gang violence being talked about, why is there so much gang violence in those countries?

It is, in part, because we have open borders. I was in Panama 3 years ago. I went to the Darien Gap. I saw what was going on down there when hundreds of thousands of people were coming in through the Darien Gap. It is now tens of thousands of people who are going through the Darien Gap making their way up through Central America, including Honduras. That is, in part, what is destabilizing these countries.

If we would pass H.R. 2 and we had a President who chose to secure the border, then we would see safer countries, and we would no longer need TPS in countries like Honduras.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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