Speech #CREC-2017-02-01-pt1-PgH860-7_t8

If we want to make this country safer, if we want to make this country more prosperous, if we want to protect the American worker, then the policies that this President has adopted in the first 10 days in office are precisely the wrong way to go about doing it. They will make us less secure; they will slow down this country's economy; they will jeopardize the 6 million jobs that depend on U.S.-Mexico trade. If the U.S.-Mexico border is as secure as it has ever been--look at any metric, and you will see that I am right--if we are having record low levels of northbound migration and apprehensions, if we are spending record amounts, if we are using new technologies, like drones, to patrol the border, if we have 20,000 Border Patrol agents, which is also a record high, why is there so much concern, why is there so much interest, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much fear built up around the border? I will tell you, this is a long time in coming. And when we say that there are real issues with where these border measures are coming from, let me give you an example of some of those. One of our colleagues, when describing young Mexican immigrants coming to this country, said: Look at them. They have calves the size of cantaloupes. They are bringing drugs into this country. When you have a Presidential candidate dismiss Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, despite the fact that immigrants commit crimes in this country at a much lower level than native-born U.S. citizens, when you have this kind of rhetoric, when you have this kind of mischaracterization, when you have this kind of vilification of an entire people and their connection to us at the U.S.-Mexico border, then you be the judge of where these priorities are coming from and what they are about and why they in no way reflect the real concerns, threats, and issues that we have in this country today. My colleagues, the fact of the matter is Mexico presents opportunity to the United States and it always has. Whether it is the $90 billion in U.S.-Mexico trade that passed through just the points of entry in El Paso, the city I have the honor of serving in Congress, and Ciudad Juarez, the city with which it is connected, whether it is the 6 million jobs that we already have in the United States economy, whether it is our security cooperation to ensure that we are disrupting transnational criminal organizations that are trying to move drugs and human chattel into this country, whether it is our work to address the real security issues in the northern triangle countries of Central America that border Mexico, we will lose a very valuable partner.