Speech #1130113321

This is an emergency spending bill. which means no offsets are required. Also. it is meant to deal with humanitarian crises. both in our own country with firefighting and then a crisis a treasured ally is dealing with and then a crisis in Central America. where the violence is so severe that children are on the march to be able to escape it. These funds will pay for additional law enforcement for our Border Patrol. humanitarian assistance for HHS to house. clothe. and feed the children on a temporary basis while we find a relative and their legal status is determined. that is. do they qualify for asylum or refugee status. Much has been said about the backlog and even a mockerysome States mocked the current system because they said there were so many awaiting these types of hearings. Maybe if we passed regular appropriations. which we havent done in 3 years. we wouldnt be in this crisis. But this supplemental includes money for additional immigration judges to be able to expedite the determination of these childrens legal status. Also. it goes after the drug smugglers. the human smugglers. the drug traffickers. the human traffickers. and the coyotes who are exploiting. creating the misery and violence in Central America. and also. while they are doing that. exploiting these children who are on the move and on the march. I understand there is a great deal of reluctance to either vote for the money or to weaken our asylum laws. I would caution us in weakening our asylum refugee laws. particularly as it affects children. I hope we can pass this bill and begin to move forward with it. I want everyone to be aware we are talking about a surge of childrenapproximately 60.000 children. not 600.000 childrenjust barely enough to fill Ravens stadium. We are a country of 300 million. we are talking only about this. I hope we can move on this bill. meet our responsibilities to our neighbors in the West facing wildfires and an ally who is running out of interceptor rockets to protect itself and not only deal with the children and their request to determine asylum status. but at the same time we put the money in the Federal checkbook to go where the crime and the criminals are. which is the narcotraffickers in Central America. I will have more to say before we wrap up. but I now yield the floor.