Speech #CREC-2017-02-01-pt1-PgH865_t1

This is personal, Mr. Speaker. It is personal to these families that have lost a loved one that they know would be alive today if the administrations had enforced existing immigration laws. When I read the very, very sad story in Cottonwood, Minnesota, southwest Minnesota, not very far from my district, several years ago where a schoolbus full of kids was taking kids home from school, from after school, and an illegal alien who had twice encountered law enforcement and twice been released on the streets because the local law enforcement decided ``it is not my job,'' ran the schoolbus off the road and into the ditch, and the bus rolled over. Four grade-school children were killed up by Cottonwood, Minnesota: a brother and a sister, and then separate children from two other families. Three families grieving at the tragic, horrible death of their grade-school children. If we had enforced our immigration laws, those children would be alive today. They would be living, laughing, loving, studying, maybe teaching. They would be falling in love and doing all of the things that we want them to do as Americans, but their lives were snuffed out because we had an administration that refuses to enforce the law. Others would say: Well, Congressman King, you cannot assert that it is because of illegal activity or illegal aliens in America that brought about the death of those four children in Cottonwood, Minnesota, or the death of Sarah Root from Modale, Iowa, or the death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, or Jas Shaw, or Brandon Mendoza, or Dominic Durden. All of their lives and thousands more have been lost because we refused to enforce immigration law. They tell me: No, crimes will be committed, bad things will happen; it has got nothing to do with not enforcing immigration law. My answer to them is, Mr. Speaker: Then you go tell those parents in Cottonwood, Minnesota, that their children would still be dead if we had deported the perpetrator who killed them. You go tell the parents of Kate Steinle that she would still be dead if Juan Francisco Lopez- Sanchez had been effectively deported or locked up for a mandatory 5- year sentence, as we have written into Kate's law, that Kate would still be dead if we had enforced such a law on Sanchez. Or go tell the mother of Brandon Mendoza that her fine and proud law enforcement son would still be dead if we had deported the illegal who ran him down that day. Or tell Jamiel Shaw that his son, Jas, would still be dead if we had deported the illegal alien who murdered his son on the street in his neighborhood. We know better, Mr. Speaker.