Speech #1130112983

Madam Speaker. I yield myself 6 minutes. I rise today to present H.R. 5230. which provides immediate. shortterm funding to address the southwest border crisis. In total. this bill provides $659 million to meet urgent border security and humanitarian needs for this fiscal year ending on September 30. Thousands of illegal immigrants. including unaccompanied children. have flooded our borders and overwhelmed our current facilities and personnel. This includes a staggering number of children. arriving with no family. who are being smuggled across our borders by criminal organizations. subject to abuse and violence. We need to put safeguards in place to prevent them from taking this dangerous journey. as well as provide the resources needed to take care of them and process them appropriately. The President must take the lead on this by mitigating this crisis. turning back the tide of illegal immigrants. and fully enforcing our laws. This prob lem has. without a doubt. been exacerbated by the administrations policies on immigration. and it is up to the administration to find a way to fix that problem. In the meantime. however. Madam Speaker. it is plain that something must be done to ensure that our law enforcement personnel and Federal agencies have the resources needed to deal with this dire situation in the short term. The $659 million in funding in this bill focuses on three areasborder security. humanitarian assistance. and preventionto meet the most pressing needs. Of this total $659 million. $462 million is provided to increase security and enforce our laws. boosting personnel. and increasing detention space to the largest capacity in our history. Part of this funding will help accelerate judicial proceedings by increasing the number of temporary judges and outfitting all immigration courtrooms in the Nation with teleconferencing equipment that would allow them to be able to join in the process of adjudicating those cases on the border. There are some 332 of those courtrooms around the country. We have doubled existing funding for the National Guard to bolster their presence along our border. as they assist Customs and Border Protection with surveillance. investigations. and humanitarian efforts. The bill also provides $197 million to take care of these unaccompanied children. ensuring they have proper housing. meals. and temporary care while they are in U.S. custody. Madam Speaker. to stave off the continued influx of illegal immigration. the bill redirects existing State Department funding to ensure that countries like Guatemala. Honduras. and El Salvador must quickly accept and repatriate those returning from the U.S. This bill draws a hard line on spending. scrubbing the Presidents request to focus on the most immediate needs.