Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that response. I wanted to roll through what our sanctuary cities legislation does
that we just passed today, and it goes a pretty good, long,
comprehensive way. I pointed out that I brought the first sanctuary cities legislation
into this Congress that I could find a record of. It was in 2005 when I
brought an amendment through the Homeland Security appropriations to
cut all funding to sanctuary cities. 2005. And then along the way, each
opportunity that was there, I brought an amendment to cut off funding
to sanctuary cities. Most of the time it was in the Judiciary, the
justice appropriations bill. And I see a number of them here scattered
in my memo that I asked staff to put together. So as far back as 12 years ago, I have been working to end Federal
funding going to sanctuary cities that defy local law enforcement. And
we have gotten resistance from the other side of the aisle
consistently. Barack Obama was never going to sign anything like that,
but I kept beating the drum every year to cut off funding to sanctuary
cities. Finally, I introduced the legislation on sanctuary cities in 2015,
and then again at the beginning of this Congress. And Chairman Bob
Goodlatte was gracious enough to pull that together so we could bring
it to the floor today. And we have had a lot of cooperation from many
others on this. I see the first date I introduced the sanctuary cities legislation as
a standalone bill was November 4 of 2015, and here we are today finally
passing it. I thought I had been at it for a long time, Mr. Speaker, and it added
up to 12 years that I have been actively engaged, at least--maybe 14--
until I talked to Congressman Lou Barletta from Hazleton, Pennsylvania,
who, as a mayor in 1999, began to raise the issue and made it a
national issue.
Keywords matched
sanctuary
cities sanctuary cities